As we have previously reported, the Department of Labor is taking important steps in the fight against excessive fees in the retirement plan space. Some service providers in the retirement plan industry are opposed to these regulations, claiming they are unnecessarily burdensome. The opposition of the 408(b)(2) regulation that was scheduled to become effective on July 16, 2011 has now been pushed back to an effective date of January 1, 2012. What does this new regulation mean to you as an employer offering retirement plan benefits to your employees?

What is 408(b)(2)?

408(b)(2) requires retirement plan service providers to disclose comprehensive information about their fees and potential conflicts of interest to you, the plan sponsor. This sounds like a good idea, right? And it seems relatively simple. Service providers must disclose to their clients how much is being received in fees and tell them if they have any conflicts of interest.

As you can imagine, service providers cried wolf saying the Department of Labor did not give them enough time to meet the regulation. Enough time? How much time does it take to take to let plan sponsors know what fees they are paying? The department of labor responded by issuing a statement that said in effect that they recognize service providers may need additional time for compliance.

“We want employers and workers to benefit from the increased transparency provided by these rules as soon as possible,” said Phyllis C. Borzi, assistant labor secretary for employee benefits security. “But we also appreciate that service providers may need more time for compliance efforts, because they have not yet seen a final Employee Retirement Income Security Act Section 408(b)(2) regulation. This action will provide that plan fiduciaries have all required information from service providers before they must disclose information to their workers, ensuring that workers receive accurate information about their retirement plan and investment costs.”

What are the questions to ask about retirement plan fees?

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Do your employees “get it”?

If not, add this simple form to your tool box. These three concepts – customer service, professionalism, and HIPAA – are the basis for 80% of your everyday performance issues.

Tweak the language to fit your workplace, then print it. Ask existing employees to sign it and hand it back to you personally so you have the opportunity to ask them if they have any questions, and so you can discuss any behaviors they currently exhibit where coaching is needed. This constitutes verbal counseling and you have documented it in writing. Depending on your discipline policy, if the employee continues to perform poorly in the same area, follow up with written counseling, a performance improvement plan, or specific consequences.

Have this form in your new employee packet and review it with new employees as part of the orientation process.

Notice of Performance Expectations

Demonstrate outstanding customer service

• Smile with your eyes.
• Follow the 5-10 Rule. When you are 10 feet away from a patient, make eye contact. When you are 5 feet away from a patient, greet them. Apply the 5-10 rule to everyone.
• Thank patients, sincerely.
• Ask patients how you can help them.

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My post from 2010 on how much healthcare managers make is one of my most-visited posts ever. It’s time to revisit the data and talk about the direction healthcare jobs are taking.

First, some clarification on Office Manager, Site Manager and Practice Administrator titles and job descriptions.

The Office Manager title applies in two situations:

1. The first is the top position in a small medical practice (three physicians or less) supervising at least two employees. In addition to managerial duties, the office manager often functions in a full-time or part-time staff position, either at the front desk or as a biller. The Office Manager in this situation does just about everything including the three Ps – Payroll, Payables and Purchasing.
2. The second situation is the #2 position in a larger practice. The title could also be Assistant Administrator or Operations Manager. This person is responsible for all day-to-day operations, human resource functions and all department activities. S/he typically directly supervises all supervisors and leads and/or all staff if no middle management position exists.

A Site Manager or Site Administrator is responsible for one or more locations of a multi-location practice or a group of hospital-owned practices. S/he has all the responsibilities of an Office Manager for the day-to-day operations of a practice, but typically has a central support system. Duties deferred to the central support may include finance, human resources, billing and purchasing. Policies emanate from central administration, therefore the Site Manager does not have the autonomy of the Office Manager or Practice Administrator.

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It is my pleasure to announce Manage My Practice’s first product in our new Manage My Practice Tools section – MMP FileConnect.

MMP FileConnect is a simple and affordable way to:

• Increase efficiency in your practice by reducing workflow issues and duplication of paperwork.
• Cut expenses for on-site and off-site storage.
• Promote collaboration and teamwork between departments, locations and employee silos.
• Reduce risk by keeping critical documents secure.
• Access files anywhere from any browser or mobile device (especially great for the docs!)

How does MMP FileConnect work?

MMP FileConnect is similar to a new and improved filing cabinet that resides in the cloud (a secure Internet domain), not on your server. It allows the administrator to design a folder and file system and assign users permissions (view, upload, download, edit, etc.) in their practice.

The administrator can set up groups of users with the same permissions, and can easily add or delete users, change existing groups’ settings, or change file organization. In my practice I have a structure something like this:

1. Employees
   • Office Forms such as PTO requests, fax cover sheets and reimbursement requests
   • Patient Forms such as demographic sheets and financial agreements
   • Calendars such as call calendars, vacation calendars and birthday calendars
   • Lists & Reference Documents - internal and external phone lists, practice abbreviations, and insurance plans the group participates with.
2. Physicians & Administrator
   • Monthly Financials
   • Reimbursement Requests
   • Time Off Notifications
3. Billing Staff
   • Provider CME records
   • Provider Credentialing Records
   • Payer Contract Summaries
4. Administrator
   • Personnel Files
   • Payroll Files & Compensation Spreadsheet
   • Contracts & Leases

You can also invite external users to be a part of MMP FileConnect for easy communication surrounding documents. My benefits broker is a user so I can place new employee benefit enrollment forms on FileConnect and she is immediately notified without me having to send an email. She can download the enrollments and process them immediately. An added benefit is that I have a tracking record of when I placed the forms there and when she picked them up.

What about the security of MMP FileConnect?

MMP FileConnect is built on the Box.net platform. Box knows the healthcare industry is one of the worlds most demanding marketplaces when it comes to data security and customer privacy. The implicit trust between a provider and a patient is critical to all stakeholders. With MMP FileConnect and Box you can be sure that your stored data is absolutely safe. Box has a SAS 70 type II certification, meaning it has been independently audited by the AICPA for sensitivity in handling healthcare data. All of your data on MMP FileConnect is 256-Bit AES encrpyted both in storage and in transfer. There is the capability for a complete audit, giving you the tools to monitor and manage your information with peace of mind. On top of that, Box.net has a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, so you can count on your data being there anytime you need it.

Do I have to logon to a website every time I want to use a document?

One of the best features of MMP FileConnect is the desktop file sync feature. Every user can keep a desktop folder of most-used files and folders stored on FileConnect and can utilize them without going to a browser or using a login and password. Anytime a file is updated by any user, the newest version automatically syncs to the appropriate desktops.

What else can it do?

For more ideas on how to use this amazing tool, see my post on “76 Ways to Use the Cloud” here. Every one of those 76 ways is doable with MMP FileConnect!

What does MMP FileConnect cost?

A very affordable $25 per month per user, with discounts for paying annually and for groups of 50 users or more.

Tell me more!

For more information and an opportunity to try MMP FileConnect free for 28 days, click here to contact us.

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I’ve been working with physicians for the past eight years on career diversification, satisfaction and mitigation of stress and burnout and can relate some common themes on why physicians are angry.

Unrealistic expectations

Many doctors enter medical school with an idealistic idea about what being a doctor entails. Television shows like Marcus Welby, M.D. and ER dramatize a doctor’s life. Picture this: You are a smart individual who likes science and wants to learn more about how the human body works. Throw in a desire to help people improve their lives. Put all those ideas together and the profession of medicine may seem like a good fit. Add the additional perceived perks of job security, a high salary, professional and personal respect and medicine seems to be the perfect career. I remember riding up the elevator with one of my mentors, a trauma surgeon at the UTSA Health Center in San Antonio. He had all the elements I just described and was the picture of confidence and charisma. I wanted to be just like him. It was the logical deduction of a 21-year old college student that by becoming a doctor, I would be. Over the years, as I came to the realization that my deductions might be false, it made me angry.

Lack of business training

Healthcare reform and federal government indecision on physician payment and the SGR formula have issued in an era of uncertainty for the future of the medical profession. When most of us enter medical school, we don’t understand how heavily the external landscape will directly impact provision of patient care and our salaries. In order to get accepted to medical school and then make it through medical school, we don’t get the training in how to understand, approach and navigate the external business environment. Then, we are thrown into it and expected to survive, thrive and smile. This lack of understanding and then control over external circumstances made me (and makes others) angry.

Culture of medicine

Most specialties take their residents through a training process that is akin to the hazing process one undergoes to join a sorority or a fraternity. Certain specialties are worse than others. Sometimes it’s not the specialty but a particularly malignant residency program. All of us spend many years having our self-confidence squashed over and over again. Remember, we aren’t taught the coping mechanisms of conflict management or the business skills to negotiate and navigate our situations. All this can lead to low self-esteem and breed self defense mechanisms. Some of these self defense mechanisms can be perceived as displays of anger and some of them are actual displays of anger. Hitting walls in frustration or yelling at traffic so hard your throat aches (like I did) are definite displays of anger.

External forces and stresses

Acute and chronic stresses, inseparable in the life of a doctor by the nature of the profession, can be factors driving anger. Some of the external stresses include:

• family and friends who don’t understand the mental exhaustion that can result from daily pressures of patient demands and making sure a patient is diagnosed correctly and well taken care of;
• perceptions that doctors make millions of dollars (many doctors have trouble making payroll for their office staff each month);
• lack of respect for our time and decision making ability by the people we want to help;
• external healthcare environment entities (insurance companies, the government, etc.) without our training making medical decisions for us and then refusing to pay us for our expertise and the medical decision making skills we gave up years to attain; and
• expectations of perfection by everyone around us.

Many people forget that medicine is an art and diagnosing an individual isn’t like following a recipe for making cookies. Others want a prescription for the medicine they saw on television; still others expect to respond to treatment right away and express frustration when it doesn’t happen that way.

All of these things made me, and have been know to make other doctors, angry.

That being said, please don’t just assume all doctors are angry. There is an increasing tendency to classify all doctors as angry or unhappy. This can lead to perceptions and expectations about a doctor’s behavior that aren’t always true. Doctors, particularly ones in high stress specialties like OB-GYN, surgery and critical care, are required to make critical decisions in a critical time frame. There might not be time to say please, or thank you, or how are your kids doing, when orders need to be given and followed in order to save someone’s life.

And who isn’t angry about healthcare today? Who isn’t frustrated with the pace of change and the pressure to please the affiliates, the accreditors, the payers, the bank, and the patients?

Solution?

Is there a solution?

Some find the solution is leaving medicine, some find it is concierge medicine, some find it is becoming an employee instead an employer.

Approaching things as an opportunity and in a positive manner can make a tremendous difference in the outcome. There are basic steps you can take but the most important thing to remember is that each physician is unique and each situation is unique. There isn’t one black and white reason why a physician is angry or seems angry, nor is there one answer for every angry physician.

In this time of enormous healthcare upheaval and health reform policy decisions, there is an opportunity to create a vehicle, either for yourself or for your practice, that improves collaboration and communication. It’s possibly a time to set everyone up for future success in a soon-to-be-fully-defined accountable care organization (ACO) or medical home model. It’s a time for organizations and physicians to increase their commitment to supporting each other and building an environment that sees and treats doctors as a precious resource.

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DR. MUDGE-RILEY works with doctors and health systems as a business development and compliance consultant. She was recently called the Doctor’s Doctor in a 2010 book because she works to help physicians reduce or avoid burnout, optimize revenue and successful diversify their skill set. Dr. Mudge-Riley received her medical degree from Des Moines University Osteopathic Medical School and her Masters Degree in Health Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. She completed a medical internship at Virginia Commonwealth University Hospital System (VCUHS) and a business residency under the CEO of the same hospital system. She has been directly responsible for planning, implementation, communication, and evaluation of programs involving healthcare wellness, change management, safety, and quality within a variety of industries. She has experience as a broker consultant within the health care industry and still advises employer groups on wellness and change management as a Senior Consultant at McCarthy Actuarial Consulting Firm. She can be contacted here.

Staffing your office can be a daily balancing act.

Theres no simple formula that one can apply to every practice because each specialty and each situation requires something different. It is very important to right-size your staffing as understaffing can cause patient dissatisfaction, frustration, burnout and a staff exodus. Overstaffing can cause lower productivity, reduction in profit and never really getting to the root of why some problems exist.

Matching FTE Providers to FTE Employees

Most benchmarks utilize FTEs, or full-time equivalents which is an employee working a 40-hour week, or a provider working the number of hours considered full-time for providers. Although this works well for employees, it doesn’t always follow for providers. A .5 FTE provider that works two days a week may need more than a .5 clinical and .5 non-clinical person because patients still call for prescription refills and questions and test results still arrive to be reviewed on the days the provider is not there.

Back to basics

It helps to bring the equation down to the simplest formula of clinical and non-clinical staff. For now, disregard billing, lab, other ancillary services, management, and medical records and focus first on the number of staff needed to get the patient in the door (front desk), get the patient seen (clinic assistants), and get the patient out the door (front desk again.)

Lets imagine that Dr. Goodman is a full-time primary care physician. He works 4.5 days per week and has one non-clinical person who answers the phones, checks patients in, checks patients out and handles the medical records. He also has a clinical person who rooms the patient, performs the intake, and takes the vitals. The clinical person also answers patient phone calls with medical questions and contacts patients to give them their test results. Either employee may schedule tests and referrals for patients.

Dr. Goodman has 2 full-time employees and if hes really fortunate, both employees are interchangeable so each can fill in for the other if they want to take vacation or are sick for more than a few days, maybe with the help of a temp or a friend if needed. If the practice also has electronic medical records (EMR) and everything is as automated as possible, they can probably get by just fine for short periods of time.

Now, consider an office with ancillaries or with more providers:

• Front desk – as the number of providers grows, so does the need for more staff to check patients in or check patients out. Floating staff between these positions can be a temporary solution before adding full-time staff in both areas. Using a patient check-in kiosk can minimize the stress of checking-in many patients arriving simultaneously.
• Dedicated phone staff – when employees are pulled between answering the phone and working with the patient in front of them, it’s time to consider a separate phone position away from the front desk.
• Nurse triage – if providers are seeing patients all day, every day, clinical assistants may not have the capacity to answer phone calls between patients. Nurse triage can also keep the office flow even by deciding when patients need to come in for same day visits. Nurse triage is more common in primary care.
• Laboratory – services could be as limited as the clinical person taking specimens, or as complex as a full-blown lab staffed with a full-time lab tech to draw blood and test it.
• Referrals – most primary care offices refer patients for lots of tests and if the process is not electronic and requires lots of time on the phone, you may need to dedicate a FTE person to this job if you have 3-4 providers.
• Billing – billing can be completely outsourced from the entering of charges to pushing accounts to collections, or it can be handled in-house. A typical ratio is one billing person to two providers.
• X-ray – for those offices that require x-ray, one employee is enough only if there is another x-ray facility close by.
• Medical records – depends entirely on the office flow, the size of the office (how many places can a medical record hide?) and how many records are flowing in and out of the office every day.
• Transcription – unless the provider hand-writes office notes or is using voice recognition, transcription will need to be provided for in-house or be out-sourced.
• Management – when does a practice need a manager? Well, that’s another post for another day, but typically a solo physician does not need a manager, unless he has lots of ancillaries with lots of associated employees.

And in a specialist’s office:

• Surgery scheduling – in some surgical practices, the clinical assistant does the scheduling while the physician is in surgery. Larger practices employ centralized surgery scheduling which usually takes 2 schedulers to make sure one scheduler is available at all times.
• Specialized Testing – one technician is usually enough for each testing modality, unless the practice is doing testing for other practices. The other exception is if the equipment, a nuclear camera for instance, is so expensive that the practice cannot afford to not be able to do tests if an employee is absent.

Why do some offices need more staff and some need less?

• Inefficiency requires more people! If people have to get out of their seats to solve a problem or get an answer, they’re inefficient.
• Systems and processes must support the work of the employees.
• Some physicians can keep two (or more) clinical assistants busy.
• Some physician specialties order many more tests and need more staff to schedule them.
• More people are required to manage paper charts than are needed for electronic medical records.
• Healthcare requires more paperwork and more phone calls than it did even 5 years ago, and it takes more people to handle the paperwork and the calls.

What should you do if you can’t figure out if it’s taking too many people to do the work?

1. Make sure you know exactly what every person is doing. Have everyone keep a log of all the jobs they do over the course of several weeks. Ask them to assign the percentage of time they spend doing each task. Evaluate their lists and see if staff are carrying equivalent workloads.
2. Make sure you cross-train employees and see if jobs take more or less time when others do the tasks.
3. Is every task something that contributes to the practice? Does something absolutely need to be kept in two places in two formats? Are things being done because “we’ve always done them that way?”
4. Is one thing so far behind that it’s causing duplication of effort? Bring in a temp, ask staff to work on a Saturday, do whatever it takes to bring everyone back to ground zero again.
5. Hold brainstorming sessions with staff and involve them in developing plans for improving efficiency. Also ask them one-on-one for their ideas for improvements.
6. We do expect more of everyone than we did before the economy tanked, and employees are responding by being more stressed and by being out sick more. Evaluate if everyone is out more than in the past and how that may be affecting the work.
7. Do a simple efficiency study by observing individual employees at work and documenting what they’re doing one minute at a time for a period of two hours. Graph the work by time to see what two hours of their day looks like. Some jobs are by nature “interruptable”, like phones, check-in and check-out, and some jobs are performed best when the employees are subjected to minimal interruption. Are these jobs defined in this way, or are the two interspersed creating inefficiencies?
8. Try this exercise: create the ideal staff for your office as if you could afford every person you’d like to have. Then, start to work backwards, seeing how jobs could be combined and what positions would be nice, but not necessary. Compare the final product to what you have now, and see what the differences are. Another way to approach this is to pretend your practice doesn’t have the physical confines that it does, and see if you would staff it differently if the space was more accommodating.

Photo credit: Image by mpujals via Flickr

Each new employee you hire must complete a Federal W-4 form (aka a Federal Tax Withholding form) so you can withhold federal income tax appropriately from the employee’s paycheck.

Completing the W-4 can be very confusing for some employees, especially younger ones, however, employers should not give employees tax advice. It is the employee’s responsibility to complete the form and to seek guidance (other than from the employer) if needed. You do not want to be in the position of the employee not paying enough taxes and the practice in turn not paying enough taxes as a result of your advice. You may wish to give your employees some resources to help them, however, or suggest that they Google how to complete the form.

The heart of the information needed to withhold taxes correctly for everyone is:

• Marital Status
• Number of allowances
• Additional deduction amounts
  

The pages of documentation that accompany the W-4 tend to make completing the form more time-consuming, but some employees have never seen the additional documentation, so be sure and give it to every employee whether they say they need/want it or not.

The math for the worksheet can be confusing because it attempts to help the taxpayer find the “withholding allowances.” Withholding allowances and the number of dependents are not the same. What’s a withholding allowance? It represents the total tax deductions divided by the personal exemption rate. The withholding allowance is related to, but not the same as the number of dependents claimed on your tax return. In other words, the number of dependents is not the whole story with taxes, and other circumstances may play into the taxpayer’s requirement to pay additional taxes.

Once the employee has completed the form, deciding how many allowances s/he wants to claim, and any other exemptions s/he may be qualified for, check the form to make sure everything has been completed. Don’t forget to provide state W-4 forms if your state collects income tax. Together these forms will guide the enrollment of the employee into the payroll system.

Once the Form W-4 has been completed and processed by payroll, it is best to keep the form(s) in the personnel file as long as the information is current and the employee is employed. If the information changes it can be removed after three (3) years, but I would suggest keeping it indefinitely as long as the personnel file is retained.

It is a good idea to remind your employees to update the withholdings information on a regular basis, preferably annually, but especially when they make changes in their life that would impact withholdings such as marriage, children, divorce or death of a spouse or child. Many employees will ask to complete a new form after they file their taxes and find out they’ve been withholding too much or too little.

Resources for you and your staff:

How to Fill Out Form W-4

IRS Withholding Calculator & W-4

Adjusting Tax Withholding from Your Paycheck

Read Part 1 in the New Employee Paperwork Series: The Application

Read Part 2 in the New Employee Paperwork Series: The I-9 Form

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susan Hayes’ undergraduate degree in Psychology from NC Wesleyan College prepared her to weigh objectivity with compassion. Her Masters in Public Health from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her background in benefits administration have given her a comprehensive understanding of the complexities and scrutiny imposed on businesses, particularly healthcare businesses. Twenty years as a human resource specialist in the healthcare field means that Ms. Hayes is well-positioned to help a healthcare entity of any size find solutions for human resource issues. She can be contacted at Susan Hayes, MPH, Hayes Consulting, 910-284-1627, hayesconsulting@embarqmail.com.

Payday Image by taberandrew via Flickr

Many managers find it difficult to begin performance evaluations in a way that puts the employee at ease and opens the door to dialogue.

Do you make small talk or start reading from whatever form you’re using?

Do you preface the actual evaluation by setting the mood giving visual or tonal clues that it’s going to be a good evaluation or a bad evaluation?

Here are eight ways to start a performance evaluation and get things started on the right foot:

1. Review the agenda for the performance evaluation. This is especially important if you’re new to the organization and the employees are not sure what to expect. Tell the employee what information you’ll review and encourage them to ask questions so it’s an interactive evaluation, not just you telling them your thoughts.
2. Review the job description to see what changes, if any, need to be made based on duties added or removed during the year.
3. Review last year’s evaluation. Amazingly, many managers don’t look back at last year’s evaluation. How can improvement or goals be assessed if you’re not making a measurement between last year and this year?
4. Discuss big events at the group that impacted the staff. Providers coming or going. Installing EMR. The installation of other software. A move. Merging with other groups. Discuss it.
5. Discuss the employee’s significant events in the past year. A baby? A marriage? A divorce? A move? A Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave? A new position? Discuss it.
6. Review the self-evaluation if you’ve asked the employee to complete one, and I hope you have. Read the employee’s answers aloud and ask questions about what they meant. Here’s my favorite simple self-evaluation.
7. If the evaluation is related to a raise or bonus, start by telling them if you’re giving them a raise or a bonus. This is an unusual way to start an evaluation, but I’ve used it in the past if the employee is unable to relax and really participate in the evaluation because they’re so worried about the raise. By the way, it’s usually the really good employees who are worried – the so-so employees tend to expect the raise and don’t worry about it. Do not start an evaluation by telling an employee you are NOT giving them a raise or a bonus.
8. Review continuing education that the employee completed and ask what they learned and how they implemented what they learned.

All of these suggestions give the manager the opportunity to start the evaluation on a relaxed note and engage the employee in meaningful discussion.

Note: I am excited to announce a new book from Manage My Practice coming in July 2011: “The Smart Manager’s Guide to Mastering Performance Evaluations.” Stay tuned for more details.

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Most managers know that an I-9 must be completed for each new employee, but how many know WHY the I-9 is a necessary part of bringing a new staffer on board?

The I-9 was first required by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 (now the Department of Homeland Security – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.) This form verifies the eligibility of an employee to work legally in the United States. You, the employer, are required to verify the employment eligibility for every employee hired.

The DHS can audit the I-9s in a company at any time for no reason.

There have not been routine audits, however, the DHS has hired more auditors recently to help with the audits. Fines of up to $200,000 per I-9 verification that is not completed and maintained can be levied. Regardless of how many or how few employees you have, you must have a completed I-9 for every full-time or part-time employee. The only exception to completing an I-9 is in the case of an independent contractor or someone who was hired before November 6, 1986.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has revised the list of documents acceptable to complete the I-9 beginning April 3, 2009. The new form must be used for all new hires, and to reverify any employee who may have eligibility documentation on the original form I-9 that has or will be expiring. The revised form will improve the security of the employment authorization verification process. The biggest difference in the form is that all documents have to be unexpired.

An Employment Eligibility Verification form (I-9 Form) must be completed within 3 days of hire. This form should be kept in a separate file from the employees file. The forms should be kept for 3 years or for one year after the end of employment.

Each employee must present original documents, not photocopies.

The only exception is an employee may present a certified copy of a birth certificate.

On the form, the employer must verify the employment eligibility and identity documents presented by the employee and record the document information on the I-9 form.

Employees are required to present either one of the documents from List A, or one document from each List B and List C.

List A (Documents that establish both identity and employment eligibility)

• Current United States Passport
• Permanent Resident Card or Alien Registration Receipt Card (I-551)
• Temporary Resident Card (I-688)
• Employment Authorization Document (I-766, I-688B, or I-688A)
• Foreign Passport with temporary I-551 stamp
• For aliens authorized to work only for a specific employer, foreign passport with Form I-94 authorizing employment with this employer

List B (Documents that establish identity only)

• Driver’s license issued by a state or outlying possession
• ID card issued by a state or outlying possession
• Native American tribal document
• Canadian driver’s license or ID card with a photograph (for Canadian aliens authorized to work only for a specific employer)
• School ID card with a photography
• Voter’s registration card
• U.S. Military card or draft record
• Military dependent’s ID Card

List C (Documents that establish employment eligibility only)

• Social Security account number card without employment restrictions
• Original or certified copy of a birth certificate with an official seal issued by a state or local government agency
• Certification of Birth Abroad
• US Citizen ID Card
• Native American tribal document
• Form I-94 authorizing employment with this employer (for aliens authorized to work only for a specific employer)

No I-9 Documentation?

An employee who fails to produce the required document, or a receipt for a replacement document (in the case of of lost, stolen or destroyed documents), within three business days of the date employment begins, can be terminated. An employee who shows a receipt has ninety days to present the original documents.

Click here to read “New Employee Paperwork Explained – Part 1: The Application”

*****

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susan Hayes’ undergraduate degree in Psychology from NC Wesleyan College prepared her to weigh objectivity with compassion. Her Masters in Public Health from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her background in benefits administration have given her a comprehensive understanding of the complexities and scrutiny imposed on businesses, particularly healthcare businesses. Twenty years as a human resource specialist in the healthcare field means that Ms. Hayes is well-positioned to help a healthcare entity of any size find solutions for human resource issues. She can be contacted at Susan Hayes, MPH, Hayes Consulting, 910-284-1627, hayesconsulting@embarqmail.com.