Home Care Workers: A Case Study

This exercise point out some very important factors with regard to health care cost.  nursing homes and other health care delivery systems are faced with significant shortfalls in reimbursement for various reasons.  Medicare reimbursement often does not cover the full extent of treatment of individuals.  McPike (2008) notes that, “The insurance and hospital industries released a study today showing that underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid costs consumers and employers $88 billion more a year for health care as providers attempt to make up the difference.” Today with continue cutbacks in medicare reimbursement this number is significantly higher.  In an attempt to reclaim these losses, both self pay and privately insured patients are charge

At $7.25 an hour and roughly $13,000 per year, it is hard to manage with the expense of everything going up on a daily now. But that is where we have our branches of government to come in and make things better or at least put up a fair argument as to why minimum wage should be increased. The President, Barack Obama has addressed the issue and has fought to raise minimum wage to make sure that people are able to make ends meet. Congress and the legislative branch have decided that the minimum wage should be increased because it has not been increased in seven years to this date and we are trying to make America a better place. Finally, the Supreme Courts have denied the fact of looking into a case where the rule for home health care workers and their wages are to stay in

However, this requirement will undermine employees with higher productivity per hour. A worker who used to be paid $10 per hour will have to face a reduction. This can negatively affect his productivity. Job discrimination will also rise and

While smaller businesses operating on tighter budgets may find it expensive to pay overtime, the bigger companies with few employees on the managerial positions are capable of paying for overtime for the employees whose category will fall below the minimum exempt. Furthermore, all the options available for employers to handle the proposed rule should it come into effect will still benefit the American worker. One remedy is to follow the law and raise the annual salaries of employees who are overtime-exempt which will motivate workers who are already earning a salary close to that minimum (Rossheim, 2016). The second option is to re-classify workers as no-exempt, a move that would see the workers who are earning below the proposed exempt minimum qualify for overtime pay or reduce the workload for employees so that they only work for 40 hours in a week (Rossheim, 2016). The last option would be to hire more workers and avoid paying overtime which is a good move in providing employment for the unemployed. It is evident that the options available for employers would work towards improving employees’ welfare as well as saving the organization from the challenges of low remuneration.

One of which is increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. In continuous of this, On March 13, Obama issued an Executive Order directing the Department of Labor to draft a regulation to expand the eligibility of salaried workers on federal contracts to receive overtime pay. This paper will dissect three questions; what is the central HCD issue raised in this regulation, Should the regulation be adopted as proposed? If so, then why? If not, then why not? And finally, what are the broader implications of this proposed regulation for the legal environment of

Following this, the health care system has been attempting to adjust to the decreased funding which has attributed to the rise in health inequalities and challenges with accessing quality care (Hick, 2014). Furthermore, these reductions in the financing have emerged in many long-term care (LTC) facilities that have cut their expenses by employing lower educated staff and decreasing their staffing levels (Walter, Wodchis, Anderson, Anderson, 2007). As a result, research on the cost of implementing good quality care in long-term care facilities revealed that by having well-trained staff, they could save money by preventing risks to seniors health (Walter et al., 2007). For example, skin ulcers, use of physical restraints, incontinence and levels

CS will be discharged to home with assistance from a home care agency. Along with being a primary caregiver, CS’s wife also works as a nurse. Thus, a home care agency can provide an aid when his wife is at work. By then, the home modifications for the kitchen, bathroom, and lighting system will be in near completion. CS will fully comprehend how to drive a powered wheelchair in both indoors and outdoors. CS will perform his ADL tasks with mod I using adaptive equipment, which will be provided for him to take home.

Payers like Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies currently have one main focus: reducing costs. Many studies have been performed to assess the cost savings related to keeping patients in their homes as opposed to lengthy hospital stays and/or admission to long term care facilities. As would be expected, it has been shown that homecare is a better value. Therefore, the focus has been shifting from curative care (hospitals) to preventative care.

With an average employment of over eighty thousand, the Health Care Industry is the largest in the state of Idaho. The industry growth has remained strong even in the face of a crippling recession and is projected to add even more jobs - over fifteen thousand - between 2014 and 2024, according to the Idaho Department of Labor industry projections. Home Health Care Services is a small, yet rapidly growing sector within the Health Care Industry. This is no surprise, given the bias of home health care towards services for the elderly and the well-known rise in the aging population across the state. However, this industry sub-sector has the lowest average earnings compared to other health care sub-sectors.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) addresses issues of overtime, pay child labor, and minimum wage. Also per the FLSA, it is required of employers to properly classify employees as either exempt or non-exempt, based on the primary duties and responsibilities of the position. Keeping in mind that the title of the position has no bearing on determining the classification. Now, it is common knowledge that companies find ways to classify employees as exempt, to avoid compensating for overtime. Overtime pay is a requirement of FLSA that is costly, in that employers are required to pay time and a half for hours worked over 40 hours in a work week, in addition to regular pay. This not only affects expenses but productivity as well. Take for example a nonexempt employee who does not

While there are many concerns in the nursing practice, I selected the issue of pay inequalities in homecare as this effect my current career and my future one as well. I would like the public to know more about the inadequacies involved in homecare nursing. One concern is salary inadequacies. There are many differences with salary between clinical and homecare setting, as an example, if a client cancels the visit the nurse is not paid, if there is low hours available to work, again the home care nurse is not paid. Homecare nurses are at the bottom of the sliding scale

Surprisingly, privately owned home health care agencies in California have not been regulated until recently. The Home Care Services Consumer Protection Act, which took effect January of 2016, was designed to change this. With its implementation, all Home Care Organizations are now required to be licensed through the Department of Social Services (DSS). This legislation results in the creation of the Home Care Services Bureau who will now process and review applications for Home Health Aides including background checks through the Department of Justice (DOJ). The purpose of this law is to protect service recipients who are often vulnerable to abuse and create a standard of care for service agencies.

A more explicit finding demonstrates how the care work environment influence the relationship between home care workers, clients, and the families. Meyer (2015) conducted an anthropology research focusing on immigrant care workers from South America to Genoa, the city with the highest percentage of the older population in Italy, to provide private home care services. The study included focus group, group interviews, and individual interviews during 2009-2010. She approached the participants at Spanish-language church services, care worker training courses, and other immigrant events. Historical settings regarding the labor unions in Italy, social understanding, and political

In this article they conducted a research study between levels in nursing home andquality of care measures. They study different staff ratio to the resident, and time spentwith them. The more staff the resident had, and the more time spent on them resulted inbetter outcomes. Every resident should have more time and staff.The whole purpose of this study was to research for the outcomes of theresidents and of the facility. The staff to resident ratio results found that homes with thehighest level of RNs and expenses had a drastic improvement of care on the residents.There were less ulcers, UTIs and less fractures. The facility’s had a decrease of deaths,and a much higher percent of people being discharged home. It is very interesting thatthe higher the nurses are paid the better there care gets. This article is relevant to myrole in health care because if I spend more time with the residents or am only assignedto one resident at a time I can perform an amazing job to increase the resident’s health.I disagree that the nurses should be paid much more because they should be doing itout of kindness. I do agree however that there should be more staff to take care of theresidents. This article has influenced me to give all my time and hard work to

In the United States of America the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards. These laws have to be abbey