Insights Archives — Page 23 of 49 — Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, P.C. Firm News & Events

Five Healthcare Industry Changes to Watch in 2020

Published on: February 11, 2020 | by Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, P.C.

Stephen Timoni was recently interviewed by Karen Appold of Managed Healthcare Executive regarding significant changes on the horizon which are expected to affect both health insurers and providers alike. Many are the result of a shift toward value-based care, a move toward decreased care in hospital settings, technological advances, and other forces.

Along these lines, Timoni says that consolidation has been motivated by the evolving and challenging commercial and government reimbursement models which include lower fee-for-service payment rates, value-based payment components, and incentives to move care from inpatient to outpatient settings. “Basic economic theory suggests that consolidation of hospitals and physicians enables these combined providers to charge higher prices to private payers as the result of a lack of competition,” Timoni says. “Likewise, combined insurers are able to charge higher premiums to their subscribers.”

You can read the full article online here.

Restrictive Covenants In The Employment Setting In New Jersey Where We Now Are? Where May We Be Going?

Published on: February 7, 2020 | by Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, P.C.

I. Where We Are

A. What Are Restrictive Covenants in the Employment Setting in New Jersey?

Generally speaking, restrictive covenants in an employment setting take one of three forms: a covenant not to compete, a non-solicitation covenant, and/or a non-disclosure covenant.

Amendments to New Jersey’s WARN Act Expands Coverage To Include More Employers

Published on: January 21, 2020 | by John H. Schmidt, Jr.

Employers doing business in New Jersey have been subject to both the federal and state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (“WARN”) for more than ten years. Under the prior laws, if an employer were to close a facility employing more than 50 fulltime employees, it was required to provide those employees with at least 60 days’ advanced notice of the closure or face a penalty that required the employer to pay severance compensation to each of the terminated employees. Amendments to the New Jersey legislation signed into law by Governor Murphy in January 2020 not only require employers to provide more notice to employees, but will also impose new economic burdens upon the employers.

These amendments to New Jersey’s WARN Act require employers who plan to close one or more establishment(s) within the state that will result in the layoff or termination of 50 or more employees (fulltime and/or part-time employees) from that establishment(s), are required to provide the affected employees with at least 90 days advanced notice of the layoff or termination of employment. Additionally, employers will be obligated to pay severance compensation to each of the affected employees in an amount equal to one week of severance compensation for each year of service. The severance compensation must be paid on or before the last day of employment. If an employer fails to pay the appropriate severance compensation, the employer will fact a penalty obligating it to pay an additional four weeks of compensation to each employee not correctly paid.

Amendments to the Act also define severance compensation as compensation due for back pay associated with the termination in an apparent attempt to characterize the severance compensation as wages for the purposes of bankruptcy.

“Crown Act” Amends New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination

Published on: December 31, 2019 | by John H. Schmidt, Jr.

New Jersey has one of the most progressive laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, as well as in places of public accommodation. That law’s protections against race discrimination have been further expanded under recent legislation signed into law by Governor Murphy. The new act is commonly known as the “Crown Act.”

Under the new law, it is now illegal to discriminate against anyone because of their race, inclusive of traits historically associated with race “including but not limited to, hair texture, hair type, and protective hairstyles.” The new law further defines protective hairstyles to include “such hairstyles as braids, locks and twists.” In short, you cannot refuse to continue to employ any current employees or refuse to employ prospective employees if they are sporting hairstyles that are characteristically associated with a particular race of people.

“Have We Become Too Sensitive at Work?” One Woman Today Podcast

Published on: December 16, 2019 | by Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, P.C.

Lindabury’s Employment Law Group partner, Kathleen Connelly joins Jeanie Coomber for her podcast series One Woman Today discussing “Workplace Sensitivity Training, Harassment and Bullying”. In their conversation, Kathleen shares her wisdom on what constitutes “bad behavior” and how education of employees and thorough and fair investigations is paramount for employers.

You may listen to the archived podcast here.

Healthcare Real Estate: The Pros and Cons of Buying Versus Leasing

Published on: November 7, 2019 | by Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, P.C.

“Owning real estate can be a great recruiting tool, and can lure physicians into a larger practice,” says Stephen Timoni in a recent interview with Healthcare Finance News’ Jeff Lagasse.

“They become a partner in the practice, but they also offer them a buy-in into the building,” he said. “That’s very interesting for a young physician because, down the road, what physician groups may be doing is they’ll sell their building for a gain to a real estate investment trust or hospital system, and then they’ll lease the building back from the hospital. So they cash in on their equity.”

Another option for physician groups is to retain the real estate and lease it back to the health system for additional income — providing better overall economics, largely in the form of tax benefits.

The Importance of Beneficiary Designations in Estate Planning

Published on: October 4, 2019 | by Anne Marie Robbins

When a person signs a will (or a will coupled with a revocable trust) in order to set forth a plan for the distribution of his or her estate following death, he or she often believes the estate plan is complete. But if the person has failed to carefully consider the beneficiary designations on life insurance policies, retirement accounts, and other assets, and coordinate those designations with the estate plan, the result following death may be quite different from what was intended.

Wills do not override beneficiary designations; rather, beneficiary designations ordinarily take precedence over wills. For example, if a will leaves everything a testator owns at the time of death to the spouse, and testator has a $1 million life insurance policy on which the couple’s three children have been designated as equal beneficiaries, the life insurance passes to the children at testator’s death, not to the spouse. This result arises because the language of the will works only to distribute the assets that are part of the testator’s “probate estate,” meaning those assets in testator’s sole name without beneficiary designations.

Examples of assets not part of the probate estate are assets with beneficiary designations (usually life insurance and retirement accounts, and sometimes bank and brokerage accounts), any assets with a “POD” (pay on death) or “TOD” (transfer on death) designation, and any assets titled in the names of two or more people as “joint tenants with right of survivorship” or “tenants by the entireties.”

Failing to Pay Appropriate Wages, Keep Appropriate Records and Retaliating Against Complaining Employees Can Now Land You in Jail

Published on: September 24, 2019 | by Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, P.C.

New Jersey has adopted one of the strongest wage theft laws in the country and jumps to the forefront in protecting employee wages. Effective November 1, 2019, New Jersey employers will face enhanced civil and criminal penalties, including possible jail time, for failing to pay employees in accordance with the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law, the New Jersey Wage Payment Law and the New Jersey Wage Collection Law.

Enhanced Penalties for Violators: Under the new Wage Theft Act, an employer who fails to pay minimum wage or the agreed-upon wages to an employee, any overtime compensation due the employee, or pay the employee in a manner required by law (e.g., paying employees in cash without deducting appropriate taxes) is liable to the aggrieved employee for the full amount of the wages owed plus liquidated damages up to 200%, costs of the litigation and attorneys’ fees. An employer seeking to avoid liquidated damages must 1) be a first-time offender; 2) demonstrate that the failure to pay appropriate wages was an inadvertent, good faith mistake, and 3) acknowledge that it violated New Jersey wage laws and pay the amount owed within 30 days. An agreement between the employer and employee to work for less wages than required by law is not a defense to a violation.

In addition, violators face enhanced fines of $500 and 20% of the owed wages for a first offense, increased to $1,000 and 20% for each subsequent offense, and administrative penalties ranging from $250 for a first violation to $500 for every subsequent violation.

New Jersey’s New Death with Dignity Act Explained

Published on: September 16, 2019 | by Elizabeth Candido Petite

New Jersey’s passage of the “Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act” makes it the eighth state in the nation to allow terminally ill patients to request medication to end their lives. The bill was signed into law by Governor Murphy on April 12, 2019, and became effective on August 1, 2019.

In brief, the new law allows New Jersey residents who are terminally ill to obtain medication from their physician that will likely result in death a few hours after it is ingested. Specifically, the law requires:

The person must be a “qualified terminally ill patient,” which is defined as a capable adult who is in the terminal stage of an irreversibly fatal illness, disease, or condition with a prognosis, based upon reasonable medical certainty, of a life expectancy of six months or less. This status must be determined by the person’s attending physician and confirmed by a consulting physician.

Why Bring Lawyers In? – Attorney-Client Privilege Can Be Crucial for Businesses’ Protection

Published on: September 9, 2019 | by Robert W. Anderson

Robert Anderson, a shareholder at Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper and a member of the firm’s Cybersecurity & Data Privacy practice group was recently questioned by Tom Hughes of ROI-NJ, regarding the reasons a business should consult an attorney to oversee cybersecurity planning and preparation. In short; the answer is: attorney-client privilege.

If you have a breach and your company gets sued — and it will, Anderson said — having all of your preparation protected could result in huge savings of both money and reputation. Anderson, speaking at a recent ROI-NJ Thought Leadership Series panel, explained how. “When you’re first starting to put together a program to protect your company, one of the things that you will typically want to do is hire someone called an ethical hacker, who will try to get into your system,” he said. “The results of this kind of a penetration testing that determines the vulnerabilities and weaknesses in your system will be in a report that goes on for pages and pages of all the problems in your system. If you do end up with an attack and end up in litigation, Exhibit A in the litigation is going to be this detailed report that shows all the vulnerabilities of your system, and they’ll be able to see how you elected to prioritize the problems. “The litigants are then going to say you knew you had these vulnerabilities and spot the one you didn’t fix.” Having legal counsel order the penetration test would likely shield that document by virtue of attorney-client privilege, Anderson said.

You may visit ROI-NJ to read the full article or download a copy here.