Homehealth Salary exempt help!

[nursetx2016]

Hello all.

I just recently accepted a homehealth position based out of a hospital in Houston Tx. The position is salary exempt with "triage" hours. I have yet to find out what this exactly entails but from speaking with other rns what they have been having to do is work their normal productivity of 24 points a week acquired within a 4 day period from start of cares, recerts, resumptions of care etc. working 8/9 am to whenever their last patient is and then doing triage calls after their day shift 6pm to 8am... So basically they can see 4-5 patients a day, document and still have to triage for 400 plus patients in agency through the night with no oncall pay... Is this legal? There is nothing on my offer letter mentioning triage just solely that I am salaried exempt with my biweekly pay listed. It does say I am exempt from Federal wage laws for overtime but how can this be legal? Thanks for any advice.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

Moved to the Home Health Nursing forum for more replies.

[caliotter3]

Contact your local Labor Board to find out about the legality of this setup. Highly doubt, though, that a hospital entity would be doing something that they couldn't justify to the authorities. (BTW, know someone with an "exempt" position in another state. They are subject to work, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep their job. I guess that is the whole idea behind "exempt".)

[smrslr]

The HH company I work for (also in TX) do on call pay, even salaried. They said you they have to give on call pay if you are on call, whether you get called or not. We also have around 400 patients and calls aren't that hectic and our company is really discouraging from having to make any after hours visits. If it can't wait for a PRN in the morning and is urgent, then an ER visit may be more appropriate.