Survey to Determine Impact of the Changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act to Home Care Agencies

On Oct. 1, 2013,  the United States Department of Labor announced a final rule extending the Fair Labor Standards Act's (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers. This means that effective Jan. 1, 2015, home care agencies and third party employers are required to pay at least the federal minimum wage and overtime to home health aides, personal care aides and certified nursing assistants. In New York State, home care agencies are already required to compensate aides at least the minimum wage and overtime. However, this final rule would also require agencies to pay overtime based on the aide's actual wage or base wage, not minimum wage. In addition, travel time between cases must be covered when an aide is under the employment of a single employer for the cases. As a result, this rule has the potential impact to increase the labor and administrative costs of agencies and affect the workforce as well.

LeadingAge NY reached out to other home care associations to join us in designing a short survey to send out to members to  determine the potential fiscal impact of new federal wage and hour requirements on your agency. Please keep watch, the survey will be sent out on Mon., Nov. 10 and we ask for your responses by the end of this week.

Last week, the Department of Health sent a survey to the fiscal intermediaries who provide consumer-directed personal assistance services under managed care and fee-for-service Medicaid to gauge the impact of the changes within the FLSA. 

Contact: Cheryl Udell, cudell@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8871