An Indiana care home has been the subject of a labor investigation after denying healthcare workers overtime for $86K.
Staff who looked after vulnerable elderly and disabled patients were told that due to improper pay practices, they would not receive compensation for working extra hours.
Regional Solicitor of Labor Christine Heri in Chicago said of the case that “when employers attempt to devise workarounds to avoid paying workers the wages they have rightfully earned, the department will seek to hold them accountable in court.”
Indiana Care Home denies $86k in overtime wages to employees
The person at the center of the allegations is Hahn March, who owned Signal Health Group Inc. and SHG Employee Leasing Company, the care facilities where the staff worked.
March is named in a complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Labor in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. The investigation found that March and Chief Financial Officer Nancy Stanley used an “artificial regular rate pay scheme to lower hourly pay rates” and employees lost out on $86,427 in overtime wages.
Signal Health Group Inc. and SHG Employee Leasing Company failed to combine hours to calculate overtime worked for joint employers. In doing so, they also didn’t pay employees for time spent traveling between job sites during the workday, marked certain employees as “overtime exempt” and kept irregular and incomplete records.
“The Department of Labor has asked the U.S. District Court to recover wages denied to these workers by their employers and to serve notice that trying to evade responsibilities in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act will not be tolerated,” explained Regional Solicitor of Labor Christine Heri in Chicago.
The Department of Labor is seeking $172,854, including $86,427 for the overtime wages that were denied to staff.
Due recently reported that eight individuals in the Eastern District of New York have been charged with participating in a $68m Medicaid fraud scheme targeting adult day care and home healthcare services.
As part of an elaborate kickback scheme, the three enticed Medicaid treatment recipients with financial incentives to attend Happy Family, Family Social, and Responsible Care. They then illegally billed the Medicaid program for these services, and at times, these service providers did not even facilitate medical care.
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