Labor law

Labor Law Labor Law Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 Under this Law, a business that negligently risks the health or life of its workers commits a Federal crime. This act created OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) for the Labor department to serve as the watchdog of the workplace safety for the Federal government. This law authorizes up to $10,000 civil fines for situations where employers deliberately expose workers to severe harm or death. Acts of criminal negligence can lead to six months imprisonment. OSHA creates and promulgates professional safety and health standards and provides regulations that implement these standards. The core of OSHA is its responsibility for infection (Peterson & Cohen, 1996). Its inspectors conduct inspections and investigations to determine the compliance status with safety and health regulations and standards. If a work cite is detected with non-compliance, then the employer faces a penalty. Following its inception, OSHA has been a centre of controversies, with businesses complaining of too rigid, bureaucratic, and hard to comprehend regulations, making compliance difficult.
How the Human Resource Department of a health organization can ensure compliance
According to Lombard & Pynes, 2011, the Human resource Department plays an important duty in ensuring employee safety and health as they understand the workplace and the employee demands. They should know how and when to use existing resources to take action to employee concerns. They should co-operate with healthcare professionals by participating in the compliance process. The department should recommend that the health organization’s procedures and policies address areas of special concern as highlighted in the OSHA law. Many of these areas fall in their department including risks such as billing of services and items not rendered, up coding, providing medically needless services, unbundling, and outpatient services offered in correlation with inpatient stays.
To achieve compliance, HR department should implement policies and procedures which ensure that billing and coding are based on timely and accurate medical records, and that there is a process for reporting actual violations by health practitioners so that any deliberate life risks can be well traced (Peterson & Cohen, 1996). The department should also educate the employees on their rights to communicate so that there is a reduction of any potential abuse, waste, and fraud. The communication culture can be encouraged by: announcing to workers that they report incidents of fraud through company policies addressing anonymity, confidentiality, and non-retaliation, sufficiently outlining how risk issues should be reported, by following a certain chain of command.
It should be emphasized that it is the right of the employee under the OSHA labor law to report any problem and ensure that employees are taught on the right way of approaching the compliance officer to make clear on a hospital procedure or policy or inquire for any information. The department should also communicate thoroughly and conspicuously post the hotline telephone to be known by all the employees. A safety manual should be prepared by the Human resource department and given to every employee within a health organization. This safety manual should cover every safety and health issues and OSHA safety training be implemented so that clarity is achieved by all employees (Buhler, 2002).
References
Buhler P. (2002). Human Resources Management: All the Information You Need to Manage Your Staff and Meet Your Business Objectives. New York: Adams Media.
Lombard D and Pynes J. (2011). Human Resources Management for Health Care Organizations: A Strategic Approach. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Peterson D and Cohen J. (1996). The Complete Guide to OSHA Compliance. New York: Lewis.