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Case Study: Contractor management system removes home care provider from DOL’s crosshairs

When legislation is passed or amended that is targeted at your vertical, smart business managers will take a pulse of how these changes will affect their business. This is the exact situation Joel Chaffins, Managing Partner, No Place Like HomeCare, LLC, found himself in when the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) repealed the Companionship Exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Although originally intended to provide guidance regarding home healthcare employees, Chaffins discovered that the DOL was aggressively targeting nurse registry companies, like his, with the aim of changing their business model or forcing them to shut down completely.

“We were definitely hearing horror stories,” says Chaffins. “It wouldn’t have just been, ‘Pay a fine and do better.’ It would have been, ‘Close down your office.’ We felt like we had always done a good job managing our independent contractor workforce. But we needed another tool in our toolbelt.”

That is when Joel sought out assistance from Openforce to simplify their independent contractor onboarding, contracting, settlement processing and risk controls—which is especially important for highly regulated industries, such as home care registries. There were 10 points that the DOL called out in their Field Assistance Bulletin (FAB), a detailed document aimed at outlining the new standards for contractor misclassification, which Openforce helped shore up at No Place Like HomeCare, LLC:

  • Conduct background and reference checks
  • Hiring and firing
  • Scheduling and assigning work
  • Controlling the caregivers
  • Setting the pay rate
  • Receiving continuous payments
  • Paying wages
  • Tracking caregiver hours
  • Purchasing equipment and supplies
  • Receiving EINS / 1099s

“Openforce allows us the flexibility to truly identify and confirm our vendor relationships.” Joel Chaffins, Managing Partner

Discover how Openforce helped ensure that No Place Like HomeCare, LLC was not only fully compliant but how their business was able to take advantage of Openforce’s technology platform to simplify complex business processes and automate time-consuming tasks.

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