Is Your Agency At Risk?

A $4M Home Health Aide Wage and Hour Suit Settlement and What is Means for Your Agency: 

This suit and others like it reported by Home Health Care News yesterday, together with the department of labor complaints being filed around the country, highlights a significant risk for home care agency owners.

What on the surface may seem like a cut and dry issue, is complicated due to the complexity of overtime laws.

In addition, the challenge for many agencies can actually come down to the time tracking itself.

To meet federal and local requirements agencies need to track standard hours, record and validate caregiver clock-in and out, identify, record and appropriately approve overtime hours, track downtime and meal/sleep time, and they also need to identify when sleep is interrupted, impacting hours worked and overtime pay.

In some localities, they must track sick leave eligibility to meet local ordinances.

On top of all of that, they need to of course track minimum wage requirements, which can be complicated where an agency is paying a daily fixed wage.

These are challenges that are unique to the home care industry and are not typically managed by an agency’s accountant or payroll provider.

The ability to meet these requirements originates with the management of the agency’s shift schedule.

For agencies with more than a few clients and caregivers, this requires tools and resources well beyond their accounting software.

The complexities around home care workflow in the field and in agency operations necessitate employing an enterprise system developed specifically for home care agencies.

The links above should provide your agency a good overview of the challenge and well as resources your agency can leverage to validate your approach to overtime tracking.

If you would like to learn more or if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our Chief Operating Officer, Bill Mattle, directly at william.mattle@smartcaresoftware.com.

How Smartcare can help

Smartcare provides a solution that helps agency owners track all of the items identified above, managing overtime and minimum wage requirements in scheduling as well as in the day-to-day delivery of care.

In addition, Smartcare provides the time-stamped documentation agencies need to demonstrate compliance and to support their satisfaction of overtime requirements.

Agencies use Smartcare to track downtime, meal/sleep time, minimum wage checking, sick leave, and more.

Smartcare helps track overtime from schedule creation and then helps manage overtime-approval through to payroll and client invoicing in one easy-to-use interface.

In addition, of course, Smartcare tracks caregiver clock-in and out to meet Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) requirements, tracking overtime in real-time as care is delivered.

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Smartcare was developed by agency owners and caregivers to deliver a comprehensive enterprise solution for Home Care.

One solution to manage your agency from business development to caregiver recruitment and retention, to scheduling and managing care in the home.

Manage third party billing, client invoicing, payroll and outcomes reporting all within one solution.

To learn more contact us today for a free demo.