Lawsuit Alleges Unlawful Pay-Per-Visit Compensation Scheme by Home Health Care Provider

Registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, and other professionals employed by Amedisys, Inc. have accused the company of unlawfully withholding wages and overtime in a recently filed class action lawsuit. The lawsuit claims that Amedisys’s pay practice violates state wage and hour laws as well as the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

According to the class action complaint, Amedisys, one of largest home health care service providers in the U.S., compensates nurses and other health care providers pursuant to a complicated pay structure that doesn’t take reflect the employee’s actual hours. Workers are paid for certain activities at “per visit” rates based on the estimated average time for each visit, while failing to compensate the employees for the actual time of each visit and other work they perform, regularly exceeding eight hours each day and forty hours each week, The plaintiffs further allege that, despite not receiving a salary, Amedisys intentionally misclassified them as exempt in order to avoid paying overtime.

The collective action was filed in a Connecticut federal court, and could potentially include several thousand home health care workers affected by Amedisys’s alleged wrongdoing.

Examples of wage theft in the home health care industry are many, and the U.S. Department of Labor has a webpage devoted to rules that apply to home health care agencies.

Health care workers, particularly those that provide services at patients’ home, are entitled to compensation for all of the time they put in. If you are employed as a nurse, therapist, or aide and believe that you have been denied wages and overtime, please contact the attorneys in Sommers Schwartz’s Employment Litigation Group today – we will be happy to discuss your case and your right to a recovery.

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