Complex laws around healthcare employees get more complicated

Employers have seen an enormous number of changes recently to various rules about how they manage their employee base. This includes a notice of proposed rulemaking by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in late 2023, sweeping memoranda from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), changes in Iowa statutes that relate to healthcare temporary workers and mental health providers who are employees, and final rules from the NLRB on joint employment. All of this is deeply complicated for employers of all types, but in the healthcare world, it can be particularly cumbersome to try to mesh competing agency expectations and demands—from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to the NLRB.

Health care not immune

These issues are further exacerbated by the fact that healthcare employment doesn’t follow the traditional manufacturing industry structure the Board uses when crafting its directives.