by Stephen Tweed

January 1, 2016 marks the final phase of the Employer Mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – aka ObamaCare.  All home care companies with 50 or more full time equivalent employees will be required to offer a health insurance plan or pay a penalty.

What’s your Approach?

Both of our CEO Mastermind Groups, The $5 Million Mastermind, and the Marketing Mastering Working Group, have had extensive conversations about how member companies are planning to address the employer mandate requirements.  Tom Knox, CEO of SeniorCorp in Virginia Beach, VA, and a charter member of the $5MM Mastermind Group has taken the lead among our groups in exploring the options and presentation rational choices for other CEOs to consider. Tom will be the opening keynote speaker at the Decision Health Annual Private Duty Conference in Las Vegas on November 17th.

Tom has outlined four options, and three factors to consider in making a decision.

The Four Options

1. Cut and Cap – cut employees back to less than 30 hours per week and cap their weekly hours
2. Pay the penalty – $3,000 for each employee that buys insurance through the state exchange and receives a federal subsidy
3. Offer a MEC Plan – “Minimal Essential Coverage”
4. Offer a Bronze Plan – “Minimum Value Plan”

The Three Considerations

1. Financial – how will this affect our bottom line?
2. Administrative – how will be handle the paperwork?
3. Cultural – how will this affect the culture of our company?

To help Tom prepare for his presentation, Leading Home Care conducted a survey of our readers, Academy Members, and LinkedIn Discussion Group members. To date, 217 companies have responded and we are learning  a lot about how companies are planning to respond to this law.

For example, we are seeing that large companies with more than 100 FTEs who had to comply in 2015 have taken a different approach than the mid-size companies of 50 – 99 FTEs that will have to comply beginning in January 2016.  Here are two graphs that show the differences in responses between the two groups.

Large Company Approach  

• Provide Bronze Level Plan – 78.95%
• Keep the majority under 30 hours – 7.89%
• Pay the penalty – 2.63%
• Keep the company under 50 FTEs – 2.63%

Medium Company Approach  

• Provide a Bronze Level Plan – 45.34%
• Keep the majority under 30 hours – 14.06%
• Pay the penalty – 15.63%
• Keep the company less than 50 FTEs – 7.81%

For a much more detailed explanation of the requirements of the law, the options you have to consider, and how large home care companies responding, join Tom Knox at the Decision Health Conference in Las Vegas.

Join Tom for the Virtual Home Care CEO Round Table  

If you are not able to attend, you can get Tom’s insights by participating in a two-part Virtual Home Care CEO Round Table to be held on Tuesday, November 24, 2015 and Thursday, December 17th, 2015.  Both Virtual Home Care CEO Round Table sessions will be at 4:00 pm eastern time.  These live round table conferences are free of charge to Premium Members of The Academy for Private Duty Home Care. Non-members can register below to participate on a pay-per-view basis.  Registration is limited to the first 100 to sign up.

Premium Members will receive an email from Jill Scott with registration information or you can log-in to your account and go to the Online Learning page for registration links.