The United States Department Of Labor Issues Template Home Care Worker Employment Agreements
Polsinielli | By William C. Vail and Clayton Nedza
The U.S. Department of Labor recently issued a template home care worker employment agreement to increase visibility of employee rights and employer responsibilities. This document comes as a result of an April 2023 Executive Order titled Increasing Access to High-Quality Care and Supporting Caregivers.
The Executive Order called on the Department of Labor to develop “compliance assistance and best practices” for, among others, home care workers. The DOL explained that the informal and non-binding sample agreement is not required by law. Rather, it is better viewed as “tools” that may help household employers and workers develop their own employment agreements together, “thereby reducing potential future misunderstanding or conflict and strengthening the employment relationship and trust.”
The DOL further states that the agreement reflects topics that employers and employees may voluntarily choose to address. For example, the template agreement provides for an explanation of benefits like health insurance, paid leave, pay if the employer cancels a shift on short notice, and on-call pay – none of which are required by federal law. The DOL is also careful to note that the sample agreement does not constitute legal advice, an official statement of position by the DOL or reflect the full range of laws that may apply in every situation, such as local and state laws. It also notes that the use of an employment agreement cannot waive the rights or protections of an employee under applicable federal, state, or local law.
Any questions may be directed to your Polsinelli attorney, the Authors of this article, or any attorney in our Labor & Employment Department. |
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Nursing Home Care Continues to Outpace Most Categories of National Health Spending: Altarum
McKnight’s Senior Living | By Kathleen Steele Gaivin
Nursing home care in September once again represented one of the fastest-growing categories of national health spending, second only to spending on prescription drugs, according to Altarum’s monthly Health Sector Economics Brief, released Friday.
Spending on nursing home care has increased 9.8% since September 2022, “a result of increases in both prices and utilization,” Altarum fellow and Senior Researcher George Miller told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
Spending on home care, on the other hand, showed the slowest growth rate among major categories of national health spending, increasing just 5.5% in September, he noted.
“This was in spite of the fact that home healthcare prices have been growing at a rate that is among the fastest among the major categories, increasing by 4.6%, year over year, in October,” Miller said. “The relatively low increase in spending was instead due to a slight decline in utilization of home healthcare services.”
Year-over-year spending growth among the other major healthcare categories, according to the report: prescription drugs (11.8%), dental care (9.8%), physician and clinical services (8.9%) and hospital care (6.9%).
National health spending overall increased 5.7%, year over year, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $4.78 trillion, accounting for 17.2% of gross domestic product.
“While the GDP growth rate continues to outpace the growth in total health spending, personal healthcare spending (spending on healthcare goods and services, which excludes categories such as the net cost of insurance and public health expenditures) has grown at a rate faster than GDP since February 2023 and grew by 7.4%, year over year, in September,” according to the brief.
“Nursing homes showed modest employment growth in October, adding 4,400 jobs. Our just-released blog characterizes nursing home staffing trends through the COVID-19 pandemic and compares recent staffing levels with the federal government’s newly proposed staffing requirements for nursing homes,” Miller said. “At the same time, home healthcare added 9,500 jobs in October, slightly above the monthly average over the past year.' |
Older Adult Population will Surpass Younger Age Groups in 2029 as ‘Notable Shifts’ Occur
McKnight’s Senior Living | By Kimberly Bonvissuto
The US older adult population is expected to surpass the size of younger age groups in 2029, according to the latest US Census Bureau population projections, which also forecast that the nation’s population will reach a high of almost 370 million in 2080 before declining to 366 million in 2100.
The 2023 national population projections indicate that the US experienced “notable shifts” in components of population change over the past five years, including the increasing older adult population.
The statistics are being watched closely by the long-term care industry as it clambers to capture a growing number of prospective residents while also addressing workforce shortages.
“In an ever-changing world, understanding population dynamics is crucial for shaping policies and planning resources,” Sandra Johnson, a Census Bureau demographer, said in a statement.
Continued declines in fertility are projected to shift the age structure of the population to more older adults compared with children aged fewer than 18 years beginning in 2029. By 2100, 29.1% of the population is projected to be 65 or more years old compared with 16.4% of the population being aged 18 or fewer years. The 85-and-older population also is projected to increase from 1.95% of the population in 2022 to 7.46% of the population in 2100.
Similarly, the median age of the US population, which represents the age at which half the population is older and half is younger, is projected to increase over time. In 2022, the median age for the total population was 38.9. In 2100, the median is projected to increase to 47.9 years.
The US Census Bureau’s 2020 Service Annual Survey showed that aging adults boosted the bottom lines of assisted living and continuing care retirement communities. More recent studies, however, show that up to 80% of older adults— 47 million — don’t have the financial resources to cover the care they may need down the road.
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Societal Polarization Regarding Vaccinations Found to be Distorting Accuracy of People's Recall of Pandemic
Medical Xpress | By Bob Yirka
A quartet of psychologists, economists and health behaviorists from the University of Bamberg, the University of Chicago, the University of Vienna and the University of Erfurt, respectively, has found that people's political views on vaccinations is colorizing their memories of the severity of the global pandemic.
In their paper published in the journal Nature, Philipp Sprengholz, Luca Henkel, Robert Böhm and Cornelia Betsch, describe how they conducted surveys of people regarding the pandemic and what they learned from it.
The editors at Nature have posted a Research Briefing outlining the work done by the team on this effort and also an Editorial discussing possible implications of their findings.
Most health organizations around the world have deemed the global pandemic to be over despite the fact that people all over the world are still being infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus—this is because of the degree of immunity that has been built up, both by people being infected and those who have been and continue to be vaccinated.
By all accounts, the pandemic was a major event in modern world history—in addition to the many people who were made ill or died, most economies around the world took a major hit. And because it was such a major event, many in the science community have begun to take a look back—some at its many impacts, and others looking for lessons learned.
In this new effort, the research team suggests that one of the lessons that needs to be learned is that once a pandemic is over, people will remember it differently, depending on their political views—in this case, on their views regarding vaccinations.
To learn more about how people remember the severity of the pandemic, the research team surveyed over 10,000 people living in 11 wealthy, Northern Hemisphere countries, asking them to rate their risk of infection. Some of those people living in Germany had responded to a survey conducted earlier, by the same group, asking them the same questions. On the second go-round, those people in Germany were also asked to try to remember how they had rated their risk in the first survey…
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Updated OASIS-E Manual
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a revised Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS-E) Manual with an associated Change Table. There are no changes to the OASIS-E instrument.
The changes incorporate guidance into the manual and Q&As from the CMS Quarterly Q&As dated July 2022 through October 2023.
Please see the two links below:
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