Archive for August, 2010

Though on Aug. 4 it withdrew its Interim Final Rule regarding HIPAA security breach notifications, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has since clarified on its Web site that the suspended rule of Sept. 23, 2009, remains in effect. "This is a complex issue and the Administration is committed to ensuring that individuals’ [...]

Class action lawsuits now outnumber all other employment-based class actions combined, according to a recent study by ELT, a compliance consulting and training organization that recently surveyed 1,800 human resource specialists and senior level managers. More than one-third of the participating companies reported facing claims based on wage-and-hour disputes in 2010. As a result, more [...]

With the augmentation of the Americans With Disabilities Amendments Act (ADAAA), the original ADA was used 21,500 times in 2009 to file disability discrimination claims against employers, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) statistics show. The ADAAA was instrumental in restoring the original intent of Congress behind the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, whose 20th anniversary [...]

The newly reconstituted National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees relationships between organized labor and business, this past Friday (Aug. 21, 2010) upheld the first four of hundreds of decisions rendered by the two-member NLRB that existed in the waning months of the Bush administration–decisions that were later invalidated by the Supreme Court. Earlier this [...]

Coming under criticism for allowing covered entities (in this case, those health care providers and others who maintain health records) to police themselves in matters of maintaining the privacy of Protected Health Information (PHI), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has withdrawn its breach rule of September 2009. The already-in-effect interim final rule, [...]