Stress management: The recession turns up the dial

Small-firm wellness programs could pay off

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: October 24, 2011
Tags: Health & Wellness

Wellness is all the rage at American employers today, but it’s largely ignored at smaller firms. The rationale is that small firms pay “pooled rates” for health insurance — rates determined by age, industry, family size and zip code, not by relative health. Spending money on a wellness program in no way changes the smaller [...]

Fitness on a budget

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: October 24, 2011
Tags: Health & Wellness

American waistlines are expanding while our pocketbooks are shrinking. With more deskbound jobs, increased reliance on motorized transportation and diets rich in high-calorie foods, it’s no wonder we’re becoming a little soft around the middle. Our growing bodies are also partly responsible for our economic woes, with obesity-related health conditions such as type II diabetes, [...]

Small-firm wellness could pay off…

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: April 25, 2011
Tags: Health & Wellness

Wellness is all the rage with large-scale American employers today, but it’s largely ignored at smaller companies and law firms. The rationale is that small firms pay “pooled rates” for health insurance — rates determined by age, industry, family size and zip code, not by relative health. Spending money on a wellness program in no [...]

Taking it off at the firm of Bowman and Brooke

By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 25, 2011
Tags: Health & Wellness, Law Firms

Rebecca Herbig’s nationwide litigation practice focuses on defending health care professionals. She’s taken a little time this year to concentrate on her own health care, by joining her colleagues at Bowman and Brooke LLP in their law firm’s “Biggest Losers Challenge.” The firm wrapped up its Challenge on April 6, and the Richmond office came [...]

Compliance Corner: Medical conditions don’t cancel out drug testing

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: February 28, 2011
Tags: Health & Wellness

Employers who do substance abuse testing need to be comfortable talking about employee body parts and, well, liquid waste. Nearly all employment-related drug testing is done using a urine specimen, generally with the types of tests that courts have called the “gold standard.” Different testing techniques on other sample types always are being developed and [...]

Act quickly when dealing with problem partners

By Nancy Byerly Jones
Published: February 28, 2011
Tags: Health & Wellness

Partners sometimes disappoint each other. But if one of your partners has a legitimate and serious problem such as alcoholism or anger management issues, you need to face it squarely and quickly while taking all necessary steps to ensure clients are not hurt or otherwise neglected because of the attorney’s issues. If you don’t care [...]

Sleep: A time-consuming but worthy resolution

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: December 27, 2010
Tags: Health & Wellness

With the New Year come resolutions. He who fails to plan, plans to fail. So, we resolve to do better, plan better, make better choices, spend our time more wisely, and to take better care of ourselves and others. No matter what our resolution, have you noticed that resolutions generally take time – time to [...]

New HIPAA rules will be keeping lawyers busy

By Sylvia Hsieh
Published: August 16, 2010
Tags: Health & Wellness, Practice Tips

Lawyers can expect to be busy in the coming year reviewing and revising contracts of health care entities and related businesses in light of new proposed HIPAA rules. The rules spell out the new HIPAA obligations that Congress included in the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, which passed in February [...]

Be aware of HIPAA when setting wellness program

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: August 2, 2010
Tags: Health & Wellness

According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Fall 2009 survey, the cost of health insurance is expected to increase an average of 11 percent to 16 percent each year. Faced with rising costs and frequent prodding by insurance providers, employers are implementing employee wellness programs to reduce the cost of providing health care. Too [...]