Q: Did the Iowa legislature make any changes to the anti-discrimination laws in the 2022 session?...more
Background checks have always been a huge issue in the world of healthcare, with many state-specific statutes requiring how background checks are conducted, as well as the other more complex national issues regarding...more
Q: With the current employment shortage we find ourselves hiring more high school or younger employees. What are the limitations there?...more
Q: The cost of PPE for our employees is starting to get really expensive. Can we deduct the cost of the PPE from their wages? ...more
Q: We had a payroll issue and accidentally overpaid an employee quite a bit. Can we simply withhold from their future paychecks?...more
Q: I want to encourage my employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and other vaccines such as the flu. Can I offer different sick leave banks to those who are vaccinated?...more
Q: Ban the Box has been around for several years now, and I know at least one city in Iowa implemented local regulations about background checks. What is the status in Iowa?...more
3/11/2022
/ Background Checks ,
Ban the Box ,
Conditional Job Offers ,
Criminal Background Checks ,
Criminal Records ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Job Applicants ,
State Labor Laws
Q: We recently had several employees apply for FMLA. Two of them are at least 100 hours short of the minimum 1,250-hour requirement but for different reasons. In an attempt to accommodate the first employee’s health issues,...more
3/3/2022
/ ADAAA ,
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Employment Policies ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
State Labor Laws ,
Wage and Hour
Grief and bereavement leave are complex issues for many employers. Employers may have defined bereavement policies of 3 to 5 days for leave while the fallout from the death of a loved one can rarely be encapsulated in a...more
At the time of this posting, the Biden administration has rescinded the OSHA ETS on vaccines for employers of 100 plus employees. The federal contractor rules remain stayed as litigation continues to work its way through...more
1/28/2022
/ Biden Administration ,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Mandates ,
Health and Safety ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Infectious Diseases ,
OSHA ,
Vaccinations ,
Virus Testing ,
Workplace Safety
In June of 2021, OSHA issued an ETS which required a variety of actions for healthcare providers. This included continuing personal protective equipment programs such as masking, specific respiratory protection standards...more
1/24/2022
/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ,
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Mandates ,
Healthcare Workers ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Masks ,
OSHA ,
Vaccinations ,
Virus Testing ,
Workplace Safety
As employees return to the workforce from remote work and the ability to take a break and walk the dog whenever they want, many are demanding to increase flexible work schedules. As humans, we think primarily about what...more
Q: Are booster doses covered under the CMS regulations? ...more
11/15/2021
/ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare ,
Healthcare Workers ,
Hospitals ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Medicaid ,
Medicare ,
Physicians ,
Vaccinations
Last week the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued new omnibus regulations relating to facility-mandated COVID-19 vaccine programs. The regulation covers a wide array of healthcare providers including...more
Q: I’m a health care facility under the new CMS vaccine guidelines. We have a lot of volunteers who come through. Do they need to be vaccinated?...more
On October 13, 2021, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued several updates to its Q&A relating to COVID-19 and vaccinations - What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and...more
11/5/2021
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Infectious Diseases ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Religious Accommodation ,
Title VII ,
Vaccinations ,
Workplace Safety
Some industries are required to keep OSHA injury and illness logs including 300, 300A, and 301s. Healthcare is one of those industries and normally logs encompass the following requirements: type of injury, death, loss of...more
Q: My employee wrote a long statement regarding a recent disciplinary action. What am I supposed to do with that? ...more
Q: We gave an employee a performance improvement plan and now they refuse to sign it. What do I do?...more
Q: I have an employee who periodically engages in poor behavior. Generally, what happens is just as the prior warning is being removed from the file, after six months or a year, the behavior occurs again. What should I do?...more
Q: We have an employee who is struggling with the basic tasks of their job. I have counseled the employee multiple times and they do well for a couple of weeks but then they backslide. I feel like I can’t fire them because...more
As part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Section 1557 is a multilayered approach to prohibit discrimination based on color, national origin, sex, age, and disability in health programs or “activities that receive federal...more
9/24/2021
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Biden Administration ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Discrimination ,
Diversity ,
Gender Equity ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare ,
Healthcare Reform ,
OCR ,
Race Discrimination ,
Sex Discrimination
Our health care facility has just started mandating vaccines and we are finding that a number of our employees have misplaced their vaccine cards. Our facility is an authorized user of IRIS (Immunization Registry Information...more
With employees continuing to have remote schedules or with the implementation of hybrid work schedules, questions continue to arise for hourly employees on what is paid or unpaid time. Questions occur when employees may have...more
President Biden’s announcement of the “Path out of the Pandemic” should not have come as a complete surprise to employers given the various previous announcements including mandating vaccines for federal employees, the OSHA...more