Home Health & Hospice Week

Agencies in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Arizona caught up in the latest enforcement sweep.

It’s not your imagination — Wage and Hour violations by home care providers have been in the enforcement spotlight more than ever.

For example: A Department of Labor investigation has recovered more than $1.2 million in back wages from four home care agencies in Texas and Louisiana, the DOL says in a release. Texas agencies Ace Primary Homecare Inc. in Pharr, Fernandez Care Assistance in San Juan, and Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans in Laredo, plus Guardian Angels Care Services Inc. in Alexandria, Louisiana, committed a variety of misdeeds.

Ace adjusted employees’ rates of pay to make it appear they paid overtime when they did not; Fernandez failed to pay overtime; AAMA made employees work off-the-clock 

overtime; and Guardian misclassified workers as independent contractors, the DOL says.

“While our nation honors [home care workers’] service during National Home Health Care Month in November, the U.S. Department of Labor is determined to make sure employers respect their rights as workers, including the right to be paid proper and full wages as dictated by federal law,” the DOL’s Betty Campbell says in the release.

The case is part of the DOL’s “ongoing nationwide effort by its Wage and Hour Division focused on improving compliance by residential care, nursing facilities, home health services and other care-focused industry employers,” the Department says in a separate release.

“Since its 2021 launch, the initiative has completed more than 1,600 investigations and identified violations in 80 percent of its reviews,” the DOL reports. “These investigations recovered more than $28.6 million in back wages and damages for nearly 25,000 workers, and led to assessments of nearly $1.3 million in civil monetary penalties for employers who willfully violated federal law.”

The problem seems to be so advanced that the DOL held a special webinar on “FLSA Requirements in the Care Industry” on Nov. 17, according to a separate release. “In recognition of November’s Home Care & Hospice Month,” the DOL Wage and Hour Division held the “free webinar on minimum wage, overtime, and record keeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act as it relates to home care and nursing care,” it says.

Other recent wage cases include:

In Pennsylvania: 5 Caring Hearts in Aliquippa “paid straight time for overtime to direct care workers when they worked for more than one client in a week or when they worked on-call,” the DOL says in a release. The Department recovered about $47,000 in back wages and damages.

In Maryland: Salim Inc., operating as A Plus Personal Home Care in Pikesville, and Timur Yusufov, Julie Rakhamimov, and Ilona Yusufov paid nearly $570,000 in back wages and an equal amount in damages after they denied 193 home healthcare workers overtime wages for hours over 40 in a workweek when they misclassified the employees as independent contractors, the DOL says in a release. The DOL is trying to locate all the workers to deliver the back wages.

In Arizona: A federal court has ordered Urgent Home Care Inc. in Phoenix to pay 253 employees a total of $521,905 in back wages and damages after paying them straight time for overtime hours worked and for failing to pay them for travel time between clients’ residences, the DOL says in a release. “The department also levied a $24,222 civil money penalty for … willful and repeat violations,” since Urgent Home Care was found to be committing the same violations back in 2016.