Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Final countdown for HIPAA privacy compliance. Medical information privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) take effect April 14, 2003, for all covered entities other than small health plans, which have an additional year to comply. Under the rules, health plans won’t be able to disclose certain individual health information to […]
Ah, healthcare costs. If you’ve changed carriers, deductibles, and co-payments more times than you care to remember, you may be discouraged. Take heart, says Jill Madison, there’s a better place to look for savings. Madison is managing director of Consulting Services at Craford Benefit Consultants. Her comments appeared in a white paper on BLR’s all-things-compensation […]
Now that the Supreme Court has weighed in, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the law! The countdown is on until 2018 when the final provisions take effect. Time to start your annual compliance planning. Here, for example, is a (brief?) summary of what you and your organization will face in 2013: Health Insurance Administration […]
A performance appraisal system is key to helping employees grow and develop on the job and can help you to identify and reward your top performers. At the same time, a good system will assist you in identifying sub-par performers and developing plans to either improve their performance or weed them out. And, in today’s […]
by Kylie Crawford, TenBrook Not long ago, I heard a story about George Wallace, Alabama’s governor in the 1960s and one of the leading advocates for Jim Crow laws and segregation. He is well-known for his “stand at the schoolhouse door,” where he attempted to prohibit two black students from registering for classes at the […]
Many employers cite employees for violations of “unwritten” company policies that are enforced but not clearly set out in an employee handbook or other well-publicized document. This can be a big mistake. Your supervisors may feel comfortable telling employees that “this is a long-standing unwritten rule” or “just the way things have always been done,” […]
An employee’s obesity may be a disability covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal district court has held. The employer challenged the claim, arguing that the ADA does not cover obesity, but the court disagreed, refusing to dismiss the suit. Joseph Whittaker sued his former employer, America’s Car-Mart, Inc., alleging that the company […]
Last year, large health plans (those with receipts of at least $5 million) had to come into compliance with new electronic security rules mandated by HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The rules are a corollary to the HIPAA privacy requirements for individual protected health information (PHI) and specify a series of administrative, […]