Posts Tagged ‘privacy’

News Roundup: Effects of the election, medical privacy, enforcement & more

Friday, November 9th, 2012

Obama’s election & employment law, insurance, worker safety – Stephanie Thomas of The Proactive Employer posts about Obama’s Next Four Years: What It Means for HR and Employment Law. Daniel Schwartz of Connecticut Employment Law Blog weighs in with Four Potential Employment Law Impacts of Obama’s Next Four Years. Paul Secunda of Workplace Prof Blog posts about the 2012 Election and the fate of state labor law Initiatives, and John Hyman of Ohio Employer’s Law Blog says that it just doesn’t matter: “You should still follow the golden rule. You should still treat employees with dignity and respect. You should still pay employees for all the hours they work. You should still avoid discrimination, and harassment, and retaliation.” At Property Casualty 360, Arthur Postal weighs in on The Election’s Impact on Insurance Issues, and from the public policy and worker safety perspective, Celeste Monforton of The Pump Handle offers a worker safety wishlist for Obama’s second term.
Medical privacy – Roberto Ceniceros of Business Insurance reports on a Georgia Supreme Court ruling that gives employer access to health information from an injured worker’s treating physician. “The case of Arby’s Restaurant Group Inc. et al. v. McRae overturns an appeals court’s 2011 ruling that held an employees is not required to authorize such communications in order to receive workers comp benefits.” Dave DePaolo discusses this case in his post Privacy and Elections – Cultural Expectations
Texas pill millsDozens of health licenses surrendered in pill mill raids – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and 14 local and state agencies have conducted and eight-month probe of pill mills in Texas, which they called Operation King of the Pill. “The raids have already forced three doctors, five pharmacies, four physician assistants and 13 advanced nurse practitioners to surrender their federal licenses for dispensing controlled substances.”
ComorbiditiesStudy finds that heart issues hit employers’ bottom lines – “Robert Page, an associate professor with the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, found that lost productivity costs from acute coronary syndrome range from about $7,943 for short-term disability claims to about $52,473 for long-term ones. / The report argued that heart problems should be considered a chronic health condition alongside diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure.”
New York scaffolding sweep – According to Occupational Heath & Safety, “Top officials of two New York City departments recently announced their personnel had made 30 arrests while confiscating fraudulent scaffold certification and U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety cards at construction sites in four boroughs. Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, and Buildings DOB Commissioner Robert D. LiMandri said Oct. 25 that the two-week sweep confiscated more than 70 cards. These are required to work on scaffolding and for workers at major buildings in the city.” Scaffolding is an ongoing public and worker safety issue in New York. (See: NY scaffolding: one miracle survivor saved by physics; others not so lucky)
Noteworthy news

Health Wonkery and other news of note

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Health Wonkery – Christopher Fleming hosts Health Wonk Review Unadorned at the Health Affairs Blog. Check out the latest from the best of the health policy bloggers. And if healthcare is of concern to you, Health Affairs should be a regular read!
Bad behavior – When it comes to bad behavior, we are equal opportunity finger pointers. We’ve seen fraudulent employees. We’ve seen terrible bosses. We’ve seen bad brokers, bad insurers, and quack docs. Fraud is a game everyone can play and no one has a corner on the stupidity market. Among the recent crop of losers, we start with a post from HR Web Cafe about a mean-spirited employer who got a smackdown from a labor judge for a rather unusual contest he used to “motivate” his workers to better performance. And also on the employer side of the house, we have a classic case of premium fraud by a California tree trimming business that failed to pay workers comp premiums, under-reported payroll by more than $2 million, and failed to pay taxes. On the employee side, Roberto Ceniceros tells the story of nightmare employees who let rage over a small thing turn into a tragic event.
Spying on Employees – Employment law attorney Heather Bussing offers some useful guidelines on employee privacy and what employers can monitor. This is a really good overview. We encourage reading the entire article. Here’s some of her take-aways: “If the employer owns the system, hardware or both, the employer can monitor employees’ use of it, including personal files and communications.
If the employee owns the system and hardware, the employer’s ability to view and obtain personal files depends on the whether the employee is using it at work, whether the employer has a legitimate interest in viewing the communication, what the state’s laws and employer’s policies are, and what the employee’s objective expectations of privacy are.”

Repackaged Drugs – Joe Paduda has been in the forefront of a crusade against the practice of repackaged drugs, which has been promoted as a convenience for patients, but in practice is a costly work around for fee schedules. This is one of those under-the-radar issues that many employers may not see, but in states where the practice is allowed, it is costing big bucks. Joe first talked about the practice in 2006, and has been regularly posting updates. He brings you the latest from the eye of the storm: Is Florida finally going to fix its (repackaged) drug problem?
OSHA – OSHA has recently issued Nail Gun Safety – A Guide for Construction Contactors. OSHA says that nail gun injuries are responsible for approximately 37,000 emergency room visits annually. “These injuries occur as a result of unintended nail discharge; nails that bounce off a hard surface or miss the work piece and become airborne; and disabling the gun’s safety features, among other causes. Injury prevention is possible if contractors take steps such as using full sequential trigger nail guns; establishing nail gun work procedures; and providing workers with personal protective equipment.”
Child Workers – Celest Monforton gets the bureaucratic runaround when she tries to find out why child labor regulations were delayed by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. A Labor Department update to the 40-year old regulations were stalled for 9 months – meanwhile, two teens lost legs in a grain auger accident, precisely the type of event that made such an update to regulations imperative.
Excess Loss Development – NCCI had released a new research report on Workers Compensation Excess Loss Development. They note that, “Large loss and excess development is relevant to calculating excess loss factors used in retrospective rating.”
News Briefs

Social networking, workers comp & the law

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

In the past, we’ve featured assorted news items about how employers and insurers are turning to social networks to monitor employees for potential fraud. In fact, just last week, we learned about how the New York State Insurance Department’s Fraud Bureau recently cracked a case as a result of a Facebook posting. But social media and how it intersects with workers compensation is all still pretty uncharted territory.
Given this, we were delighted to learn of a recent paper specifically dealing with this area of law: Social Networking and Workers’ Compensation Law at the Crossroads, authored by Gregory M. Duhl of William Mitchell College of Law and Jaclyn S. Millner of Fitch, Johnson, Larson & Held, P.A. It’s a substantial document – 75 pages, to be precise, that looks at the use of social networking evidence in workers’ compensation litigation. It’s scheduled to be published in the Pace Law Review, but you can download a free copy of the report at the above link. We’d encourage you to run, not walk, to get your copy – it’s interesting, well written, and thoroughly annotated, and you don’t need to be an attorney to find it valuable.
We think that the remarks which the authors make at the conclusion of their paper do an excellent job of explaining the importance of both the issues at hand and the value of this work in particular, so we are taking the liberty of reproducing them:

“The lawyers, judges, insurance companies, and parties within workers’ compensation systems will increasingly confront the discovery, privacy, professional responsibility, and evidentiary issues that arise at the crossroads of workers’ compensation law and social networking. In the absence of case law and ethics opinions that discuss these exact issues, this article starts with the rules that govern workers’ compensation cases, and discusses how they might apply to lawyers gathering, producing, and introducing evidence from social networking sites. But this article is only a starting point. As workers’ compensation systems are built on efficiency, flexibility, and discretion, workers’ compensation is an ideal area of law for lawyers and judges to experiment with how to address some of the unique challenges and opportunities that social networking poses in litigation.

While there is a lack of legal authority on these issues, that should not cloud the reality that many employees are using social networking in their daily lives. One thing of which we are certain is that lawyers who practice in the workers’ compensation field need to be able to navigate around social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, and know how they work. Social networking is no longer a new technology, and ignorance should not be an excuse to the applicability of evidence from social networking sites in litigation.”

In the spirit of those remarks, we’d like to leave you with this video clip which gives a good overview of how social media is changing the landscape. Startling as it is, it’s already almost a year out of date.

Health Wonk Review and other noteworthy news briefs

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Rich Elmore has posted a most excellent Health Wonk Review: Special Edition on Health Care Reform, which might also be called the “when pigs fly” edition. It has a good roundup of the health policy blogosphere’s reaction to the landmark legislation and a handy, must-see one page info-graphic of the time line.
Prevention in Health Reform – at the NIOSH Science Blog, John Howard, the Director of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, summarizes prevention provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and their implications for workplace safety and health.
Frequency – At Comp Time, Roberto Ceniceros looks at the way that health care reform might impact workers comp claim frequency. He explains that the data in this area is thin, but elicits some educated opinions on the topic.
More grim news from China – In addition to the increasingly desperate search for 153 miners which we discussed earlier this week, Ken Ward reports that in a different China mine, 12 miners have been killed and another 32 are missing.
Lifesaver – HR Daily Advisor tells us that survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are only about 5% due to the length of time it takes to get treatment to the victim. The sooner defibrillation is started, the more likely the victim will survive. A recent series of posts discuss the benefits of adding an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) as part of a corporate wellness program. “OSHA says that immediate use of an AED can result in a 90 percent survival rate. With each minute of delay, however, nearly 10 percent fewer survive.” A follow-up post discusses related legal and training issues
Food processing – At The Pump Handle, Carlos Rich makes the case for food processing companies to treat workers more like humans and less like machines. We agree. Meatpacking and poultry processing plants are some of the most notorious environments for safety today. Many also play fast and loose with employment laws.
New blog finds

  • Fair Warning – “…an online nonprofit publication that seeks to provide robust, public interest journalism on issues of health, safety and corporate conduct.” The publication promises investigative journalism, legal and regulatory news, and reports from think tanks, academics, and advocacy groups.
  • Work Safety Blog from Blog4Safety – bills itself as “Your online resource for safety information, safety tips, and safety compliance.” It’s not a new blog, posts go back to 2008, but it is a new discovery for us. The blog is sponsored by The blog content has been provided by Texas America Safety Company (T.a.s.c.o.).

9/11 suit back to bargaining table – Southern District of New York Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein surprised a lot of people when he rejected the proposed $575+ million settlement for 9/11 first responders. His complaints? The settlement paid to victims was too little. Read more from law.com: 9/11 Lawyers Return to Bargaining Table to Refine Settlement.
Quick Takes

Focus on fraud

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

States offer public tools to curb premium fraud
Massachusetts has recently announced an online tool to verify that an employer has workers’ compensation coverage. The tool can be accessed from the Department of Industrial Accidents site.
In addition to helping employees to verify that they will be covered should they be injured on the job, businesses may also want to verify that their competitors are not gaining unfair advantage by avoiding their workers compensation obligations. Officials say the stated goals of the program are to:

  • Permit homeowners to ensure that hired contractors have workers’ comp insurance
  • Allow general contractors to ensure that all subcontractors are properly insured
  • Assist medical providers with coverage questions when treating an injured worker
  • Aid state and municipal officials with ensuring workers’ comp compliance with licensing, permitting, and awarding public contracts
  • Help protect employers from agent and broker fraud allowing them to verify their own coverage

State officials have noted that 36 other states have similar public services online – we’ve seen such services on the NY, CA, FL, IL and TX workers’ comp sites, although on some sites, it can be a devil of a time to find the services. See All 50 States’ and D.C.’s Home Pages and Workers’ Compensation Agencies
While most states have some type of anonymous fraud reporting system on their websites, some states are getting more aggressive than others in promoting their services to the public. Florida has been touting the results of their workers comp whistle blower site, which allows citizens to submit referrals of alleged violations of workers compensation rules. As of August, after only two months of operation, the site had already produced hundreds of new complaints and over $500,000 in penalties. Fraud reporting systems aren’t just for reporting noncompliant employers. They can also be used to report suspected employee, physician, or attorney fraud related to workers comp.
Fraud is on the rise
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, workers comp fraud referrals were up by 2% in the first half of 2009. Premium fraud was down by 21%, but other types of fraud such as medical provider fraud and claimant fraud have risen.
Steve Tuckey is currently writing an in-depth series on fraud for Risk and Insurance. The first installment, Transparency of Evidence, deals with fraud by doctors, hospitals and other healthcare professionals. He notes that “grayer areas of so-called abuse or overutilization continue to vex payers, insurance companies and lawmakers eager to maintain the financial stability and integrity of the system that has protected workers for nearly a century.” Evidence-based medicine standards are helping to curtail both the egregious fraud as well as “softer” abuses. Part 2, Vanishing Premiums, deals with the issue of premium fraud and the myriad schemes employers use to avoid paying their fair share.
Social networks provide clues
Some employers and insurers are finding that social networking sites are a useful new tool in com batting employee fraud. In fact, in many cases, fraudulent employees are outing themselves as cheats by bragging about false claims or posting photos or videos of themselves engaging in activities that are incompatible with the injuries they are claiming.
“Some claimants supposedly too disabled to work post locations and dates for their upcoming sports competitions or rock band performances, boast of new businesses launched, and include date-stamped photographs of their physical activity, investigators say.
Others have openly bragged about fooling their employers with “Monday morning” workers comp claims for injuries that occurred the weekend prior and away from the workplace.”
However, employers need to ensure that they stay within the law when using online information about employees. New Jersey attorney Jonathan Bick suggests some best practice policies for employers when mining social networks. The issue of employee privacy can be a murky one. A good rule of thumb is that an employer should avoid duplicitous methods to spy on private, nonpublic pages – a New Jersey jury recently upheld a group of employees’ rights to privacy in just such a case. Information that employees post to public pages may be another matter. As Bick notes, “In order for a person’s privacy to be invaded, that person must have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Fire the Smokers! Tax the Fat?

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Back in December of 2006 we blogged the story of Scott Rodrigues, a new hire of the Scotts lawn care company, who was fired after failing a drug test. No news here, perhaps, except that the drug in his system, nicotine is perfectly legal. Scott’s is self-insured for health benefits, so they have a vested interest in making sure that employees follow basic wellness practices.
On his way to a pre-placement drug test, Mr. Rodrigues chewed on Nicorette gum. He was trying to kick the habit. Ironically, the Nicorette may have triggered the positive finding for nicotine. Rodrigues was hired provisionally and then abruptly terminated once the test results were released.
Rodrigues brought suit in federal court for violation of privacy and civil rights. Judge George O’Toole has ruled in favor of the company. The judge found no violation of privacy laws, as Rodrigues smoked while walking down the street and in a restaurant parking lot. His supervisor spotted a pack of cigarettes on the dashboard of his truck. Would the judge have ruled for Rodrigues if the employer had peeked through a window to see him smoking at home?
O’Toole also rejected the notion that the firing violated a 1974 federal law that protects employee rights to benefits. O’Toole ruled that Rodrigues was not yet a bona fide employee and was working on the condition that he pass the urinalysis.
Jim King, a spokesman for Scotts, said the smoking ban has never been used to fire an “existing” employee. It is used solely to screen out applicants. Since the ban went into effect in 2005, the percentage of smokers among the company’s 7,000 employees has fallen to 7 percent from 28 percent.
[The Insider notes in passing that even as a “provisional” employee, Rodrigues was covered by workers comp from the moment he began working – indeed, while he was on his way to the drug testing lab.]
Whether employees can smoke or not depends upon the state they work in. A few states (e.g., Kentucky, Louisiana) explicitly protect smoker rights. Other states do not. It’s interesting that Rodrigues pursued his case in federal court, probably because Massachusetts laws offered no protection to smokers.
Is Obesity Next?
We all know that smoking increases the risk of illness and the cost of medical coverage. The same goes for obesity. So the next front in the battle to control the business side of medical costs may well be the bathroom scale. The New York Times magazine profiles the Cleveland Clinic, which has been upheld as a model for medical cost control. Two years ago, they stopped hiring smokers. Delos M. Cosgrove, the heart surgeon who is the clinic’s chief executive, would like to expand the hiring ban to include applicants who are obese.
“Why is it unfair? Has anyone ever shown the law of conservation of matter doesn’t apply?” Cosgrove states that people’s weight is a reflection of how much they eat and how active they are. The country has grown fat because it’s consuming more calories and burning fewer. Our national weight problem brings huge costs, both medical and economic. Yet our anti-obesity efforts have none of the urgency of our antismoking efforts. “We should declare obesity a disease and say we’re going to help you get over it.”
Should the Cleveland Clinic – or any other employer- decline to hire obese people, it will be interesting to track the results. Where obesity can be traced back to genetic or chemical issues – where it qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act- employers would be guilty of discrimination. If no such causes can be specified, employers may be on solid ground. (The unaddressed issue in these hiring practices, of course, is the loss of a vast pool of talented and often essential workers.)
A recent article in Health Affairs estimated the annual cost of obesity to be $147 billion and growing. That translates into $1,250 per household, mostly in taxes and insurance premiums.
The Fat Tax
Cosgrove is interested in an idea that some economists favor: charging higher health-insurance premiums to anyone with a certain body-mass index. Call it the Fat Tax. Another alternative might be taxing the calorie-rich foods that lead to obesity: just imagine paying a little surcharge for your large order of fries, your jumbo soda and your two-for-one pizza. That would be interesting, indeed! Just as smokers pay a tax-driven premium for their cigarettes, eaters would be taxed for their food addictions.
This is simply not going to happen. To be sure, fundamental wellness is the cornerstone of any plan to contain health care costs. But when the public good collides with the rights of freedom and privacy, individual rights will win out. Policy wonks may not like it, but citizens can eat whatever they damn well please. Lighting up after that supersized meal? Well, that’s one area where the public good pretty much trumps the private right.

Brave new world: genetic testing and workers compensation

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

The good news is there are new technologies that hold the promise of ending fraudulent or inappropriate disability and workers’ compensation claims. The bad news is that you’ll need to get in the business of harvesting and tracking your employee’s DNA to get there, venturing into relatively uncharted legal waters. Workforce Management and BBC both discuss the new technologies in DNA Technology May Curb Bogus Disability Claims and DNA test hope over damages claims. According to the Workforce article:

Developed by the Cytokine Institute, a research and consulting firm affiliated with the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, the technology uses DNA to determine a link between exposure to a toxin and a serious illness. It does so by identifying a toxin’s unique DNA signature on a person’s affected cells.
The technology, launched in June, has already been used in two dozen civil lawsuits between workers and insurance companies to verify the connection between exposure to toxins and a serious illness, says CEO Bruce Gillis, a doctor specializing in medical toxicology.
“It will get rid of all the nuisance and frivolous lawsuits once and for all,” Gillis says.

In addition to the application for illnesses and exposures to toxins, testing may also be able to tell if an injury has even occurred. The Workforce article also discusses technology that can measure cytokines or small proteins in a person’s cells, which elevate when an injury occurs. Cytokines can be measured as a before and after baseline to verify that an injury has occurred.
Exercise caution when jumping in the gene pool
Before you get too excited, you might check in with your lawyers, many of whom are likely to advise caution due to potential problems with privacy and discrimination issues. While there are no federal prohibitions against genetic testing, at least 30 states have laws that may say otherwise. HR Hero sheds light on the status of federal legislation putting limits on genetic testing in Lifeguard on duty: Congress patrols the gene pool, excerpted from Arizona Employment Law Letter. While many of the legal prohibitions deal with matters related to hiring discrimination and insurance denial rather than work injuries, attorneys advise a conservative approach in matters dealing with employees’ genetic information.
Genetic testing is already a hot button employment issue. Its application to workers’ compensation and other disability matters is an issue that bears watching. For a handy reference guide, the National Conference of State Legislatures offers a chart on State Genetics Employment Laws.