Health Care and FDA: Health Care Employment
Health care organizations are regularly faced with employment and benefits challenges unique to their industry. Whether it is managing a highly unionized workforce, mitigating open campus environment conduct incidents, addressing drug diversion and screening issues, navigating complex benefit plan issues as both an employer and provider, or accurately classifying and compensating physicians and sales force members, our Health Care Employment practice is adept at addressing the unique challenges that health care employers face.
We bring together a global, industry-focused team committed to health care organizations’ success in their critical and always evolving relationship with employees. Our full-service, integrated team is able to support health care industry participants in the areas of labor, employment and workplace safety, immigration, and employee benefits. The team’s range of work includes ensuring legal compliance in a heavily regulated market, mitigating employment risks, structuring benefits plans that are beneficial to both the company and its workforce, and providing opportunities to employ the best talent through our immigration assistance.
Our capabilities include:
Labor, Employment, and Workplace Safety
We regularly counsel health care organizations such as hospitals, clinics, senior care facilities, and research and higher learning institutions, among many others, on a complete spectrum of labor, employment, and workplace safety issues across the globe. Our breadth of work spans the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia, and includes conducting complex and sensitive employee investigations and providing assistance with affirmative action initiatives, workplace safety compliance, and the implementation of drug screening programs. In addition, we have deep experience in handling disputes regarding physician pay, allegations of discrimination and harassment, and proper classification of workers under state and federal wage and hour laws in the United States, including interpreting said laws related to shift-based work. In Australia, we regularly provide advice to public hospitals on navigating the complex enterprise agreement system. We also advise on a full range of labor union, industrial relations, and works council issues internationally. Our experience includes everything from training on union avoidance to negotiating and administering collective bargaining agreements to defending against administrative charges, contract grievances, and litigation. Our work also extends to counseling on the labor and employment aspects of transactional matters, with particular experience related to the anti-trust considerations connected to the highly regulated pharmaceutical market.
Immigration
Our immigration team aids health care employers seeking to bring highly skilled workers into the United States. We have assisted hospitals, medical research organizations, and academia with temporary visas, J-1 Conrad waivers, and permanent residence for foreign medical graduate physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, and researchers.
Employee Benefits
We advise on numerous retirement plan, health and welfare plan, and executive compensation issues, especially in relation to tax-exempt entities and nonprofits. Our experience includes advising on benefit plan considerations such as unique provider and plan contracting and fiduciary duty issues, cutting-edge wellness questions, compliance obligations related to on-site medical clinics, and HIPAA privacy and security considerations in cases where providers seek to use their own plan data in research and population health initiatives.
In addition, we have extensive experience in handling a myriad of regulatory requirements affecting health care employers and their benefit plans in the United States under the Internal Revenue Code, ERISA, COBRA, HIPAA, and the Affordable Care Act, including required plan documentation, participant disclosures, reporting obligations, and regulatory filings.
