For most of your staff, overtime work means overtime pay

Practice Management. By Bob Cook, AMNews staff. Aug. 28, 2006.

Physicians are used to working a lot of extra hours without automatic overtime pay. However, labor attorneys and consultants say some physicians forget that if their office staff is working those extra hours, too, many of them should be getting extra pay.

Paying overtime is not a problem confined to physician offices -- all small businesses struggle with who gets paid overtime, and who doesn't. Revised overtime rules issued in 2004 clarified a few things -- for example, that office-based registered nurses, for the most part, would not have to be paid overtime -- but they haven't slowed the rush of overtime-related lawsuits flooding the court system.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reports the number of overtime cases being heard in federal courts has doubled over the last five years. Attorneys say that reflects the confusion and ignorance about overtime rules, and the Bush administration Labor Dept.'s increased focus on prosecuting overtime cases compared to past administrations' interest in discrimination cases.

In this environment, attorneys and consultants say it's paramount that physicians make sure they are clear about who gets paid overtime, and who doesn't -- and what to do if they discover they should have been paying overtime for years, but hadn't. Losing an overtime case can mean shelling out up to three years' back pay, an equal amount in punitive damages, and whatever attorneys' fees your employees rack up.

"The reality is that physicians, in starting up a practice, have so many things on their plate that wage and hour issues can fall by the wayside," said George Voegele, who has handled physician practices as an attorney for Cozen & O'Connor in Philadelphia. "And that happens at their peril."