New Colorado Paid Sick Leave Laws Go into Effect

Brownstein

On Aug. 7, 2023, Colorado expanded employee rights to additional uses of paid and protected sick leave with the addition of new categories for which employees can use sick leave.

Since 2022, the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplace Act (“HFWA”), which was originally passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has required all employers in the state of Colorado regardless of size to provide all of their employees with paid sick leave. The HFWA mandates paid sick leave be given to all employees, including part-time, temporary and migratory laborers, with the exception of federal government employees.

As a brief reminder, under the HFWA, paid sick leave must accrue at a minimum rate of one hour per every 30 hours worked, but employers may cap paid sick leave accruals at no less than 48 hours per year. Up to 48 hours of accrued leave may be carried over to the subsequent year. Employees must be compensated for sick leave at the same hourly rate as ordinarily received. Employers may request “reasonable documentation” for paid sick leave only if the employee is absent for four or more consecutive work days and may request no more than is needed to show a valid reason for leave.

Previously, the HFWA permitted employees to use paid sick leave for the following reasons:

  • the employee’s inability to work due to a mental or physical illness, injury or health condition
  • the employee’s need to obtain preventive medical care (including vaccination), or medical diagnosis/care/treatment.
  • the employee’s needs due to domestic abuse, sexual assault or criminal harassment, including medical attention, mental health care or other counseling, legal or other victim services, or relocation
  • to care for a family member who needs the sort of care listed above
  • the employee’s need for leave during a public health emergency when a public official closed the employee’s workplace or the school or place of care of the employee’s child.

Effective Aug. 7, 2023, employees may take protected paid leave for the following additional uses:

  • bereavement, or financial/legal needs after a death of a family member
  • when an employee, due to inclement weather, power/heat/water loss or other unexpected event, must evacuate their residence or care for a family member whose school or place of care was closed

For policy background, the change to the HFWA was sponsored by Reps. Junie Joseph and Jenny Willford of Boulder and Adams counties, respectively, and Sen. Faith Winter of Adams, Broomfield and Weld counties. The HFWA bill was introduced in the aftermath of the 2021 Marshall fire and Boulder fire, which caused the evacuation of over 37,000 and 19,000 people respectively. In her testimony introducing the bill, Sen. Winter made reference not only to these wildfires but also the significant deviations in heat and cold during the previous year, which led to statewide closures of schools. Extreme weather conditions have contributed to a significant increase in the frequency and size of destructive fires in the state, with two of the five most destructive fires having occurred in the past three years. Sen. Winter’s testimony indicates the growing concern of Coloradans regarding variations in weather and how extreme weather can impact the employment relationship.

Employers should review and update their sick leave or paid time off policies to include the bill’s additional bases for paid sick leave under the HFWA immediately. Under the HFWA, employers are required to notify each employee, in writing, of their right to take paid leave (including their right to protection from retaliation for requesting or using leave) and the permissible purposes for which leave can be used.

Employers are also required to display in the workplace an informational poster setting forth their rights under the HFWA. Employers who willfully violate these notice requirements may be subject to civil fines up to $100 for each violation. Moreover, as a result of paid sick leave falling under the definition of “wages” pursuant to the Colorado Wage Claim Act, failure to comply with these requirements can expose employers to liability for unpaid wages (however, unused paid sick leave need not be paid upon termination of employment).

In Rietheimer v. United Parcel Service, Inc., a class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado earlier this year, a Colorado UPS driver sued the employer for failure to provide paid sick leave. The case is still in the early stages, however, its result may establish a viable cause of action against employers who make deductions from wages for time that should be paid as paid sick leave. As of Jan. 1 of this year, employers who fail to provide wages owed within 14 days face an automatic penalty of the greater of two times the amount of unpaid wages or $1,000, with a 50% or $2,000 increase for willful violations.

Brownstein Summer Associate Anthony Georgescu contributed to this alert.


THIS DOCUMENT IS INTENDED TO PROVIDE YOU WITH GENERAL INFORMATION REGARDING UPDATES TO COLORADO'S PAID SICK LEAVE LAWS. THE CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT ARE NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE SPECIFIC LEGAL ADVICE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT OR IF YOU NEED LEGAL ADVICE AS TO AN ISSUE, PLEASE CONTACT THE ATTORNEYS LISTED OR YOUR REGULAR BROWNSTEIN HYATT FARBER SCHRECK, LLP ATTORNEY. THIS COMMUNICATION MAY BE CONSIDERED ADVERTISING IN SOME JURISDICTIONS. THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS ACCURATE AS OF THE PUBLICATION DATE. BECAUSE THE LAW IN THIS AREA IS CHANGING RAPIDLY, AND INSIGHTS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY UPDATED, CONTINUED ACCURACY CANNOT BE GUARANTEED.
 

How Much Pain Is in the Mind? This Doctor Thinks the Answer Is, Most

Medscape Staff

More than three decades ago, John E. Sarno, MD, published Healing Back Pain, a popular book that garnered something of a cult following. Looking at his own practice, Sarno, a rehabilitation medicine specialist in New York City, saw that most of his patients with chronic pain did not have evidence of acute injury or degenerative disk disease. Their persistent pain appeared to be independent of any structural damage to the spine. Sarno attributed the pain to what he called tension myoneural syndrome (TMS), or the body’s reaction to suppressed stress and emotional turmoil. Resolving that psychological conflict, Sarno believed, would lead to an improvement in pain.

Sarno’s theory has met skepticism from the mainstream community, but glowing testimonies from patients who say they benefitted from his strategies fill the internet. Sarno wrote several books on his ideas before his death in 2017. But he published only one peer-reviewed study, a 2003 review in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation co-authored by Ira Rashbaum, MD.

Medscape Medical News spoke recently with Rashbaum, a physiatrist and chief of tension myoneural syndrome at NYU Langone Health, New York City, about TMS and how he manages patients with chronic pain.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Read the Interview

 

From PTJ: Cognitive Function Poststroke May Affect Physical Capacity

Researchers in Norway believe that attention to cognitive function early on could help patients achieve crucial PA goals.

Read Full Article

 

The Message

In this study, researchers sought to measure the timing of physical therapy initiation with later opioid use in patients with incident knee osteoarthritis. They also compared patients they categorized as opioid naïve with those who had prior opioid use.

A 2021 study conducted by the same group of authors found that patients who underwent total knee replacement and received physical therapy had notable reductions in risk for the use of opioids beyond 90 days after surgery compared with their counterparts who did not receive PT services. Receiving PT services prior to surgery also was associated with reduced risk.

The present study again demonstrates the value of physical therapy in treating knee conditions. Regardless of the patient's prior experience with opioids, delaying the start of PT services was associated with higher risk of opioid use among patients with knee OA compared with patients who started treatment within one month of diagnosis. "The longer the delay in PT initiation, the greater was the risk," authors write.  

The Study

Researchers used deidentified medical, pharmacy, and physical therapy claims from the Optum Labs Data Warehouse to study adults 40 and older who had knee OA between 2001 and 2016. Patients were excluded from the study if they had a total knee replacement or other knee surgery, or if they had received PT treatment within the 12 months before the diagnosis.

Participants were categorized as opioid experienced if they had any prior opioid use and as opioid naïve if they did not have any opioid prescriptions filled within the two years prior to the date of diagnoses of knee OA. Additionally, participants were grouped by when they received their initial PT visit compared with their diagnosis: less than one month, one to less than three months, three to less than six months, six to less than nine months, or nine to 12 months.

APTA members Deepak Kumar, PT, PhD; James Camarinos, PT; and Kosaku Aoyagi, PT, PhD, are among the authors of the study.

Participants

Among the 67,245 total participants included in the study, 60.8% were female and 78.4% were white, 10.3% were Black, 6.3% were Hispanic, and 2.2% were Asian. The mean age was 61.5 years old. There were 35,899 participants categorized as opioid naïve and 31,346 participants categorized as opioid experienced.

Among the opioid-naïve group, 44.4% started physical therapy within one month of diagnosis, 24.6% started between one and less than three months, 15.2% started between three and less than six months, 9.1% started between six and less than nine months, and 6.8% started between nine and 12 months. This breakdown was fairly similar for the opioid-experienced patients.

Findings

  • Among both opioid-naïve and opioid-experienced patients, starting physical therapy one to less than three months after diagnosis was associated with about 20% increased risk of any opioid use compared with those started PT services within one month.
  • Compared with patients who started treatment within one month of diagnosis, opioid-naïve patients who didn't start physical therapy until nine to 12 months after diagnosis had a 93% increased risk of any opioid use, while opioid-experienced patients had a 54% higher risk.
  • When it came to chronic opioid use, opioid-experienced patients had lower risk compared with their opioid-naïve patients, topping out with a 65% increased risk for patients who started treatment between nine and 12 months. For opioid-naïve patients, the increase in risk for chronic opioid use ranged from 25% (PT treatment one to less than three months) to 150% (treatment initiated nine to 12 months).
  • Active PT treatment, as determined by CPT code, was associated with a lower risk of any opioid use but not chronic opioid use among both cohorts. Active treatment included therapeutic exercises, neuromuscular reeducation, and gait training, among others. Passive codes included treatments such as manual therapy, electrical stimulation, and hot or cold pack therapy.
 

Industry Voices—Let's Treat Loneliness Like Other Public Health Crises

Fierce Healthcare / By Kyu Rhee, Tom Insel, Dan Russell, Dena Bravata, Boaz Gaon
 
A silent and grossly underserved epidemic of loneliness is affecting 60% of all Americans including 75% of young adults and 40% of older adults—influencing and complicating mental health disordersphysical health disordersadherence to treatment and increasing hospitalizations.
 
The U.S. Surgeon General, in a recently published and widely discussed “Advisory on our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”, has stated that “we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity, and substance use disorders.”
 
Numerous experts have called attention to our loneliness epidemic, describing its negative health impact as similar to “smoking 15 cigarettes a day”. It is time for a systematic approach to address the loneliness epidemic that is crippling US healthcare as well as the quality and health of human relationships in America.

A crucial and pressing step toward achieving this goal is universal screening for loneliness. 
What is loneliness?   
 
Social isolation is the objective lack of interaction with others (as happens when people live alone). Loneliness is similar but refers to the subjective feeling of being alone or the gap between one’s expectations of the quantity or quality of relationships and what is actually experienced.
 
In other words, loneliness is a “subjective feeling that the human connections we need in our life exceed the human connections we have." These feelings, as well as comorbid stress, anxiety and depression, have intensified even as the rates of COVID-19 detections have receded.
 
The “Big Resignation” did not start with COVID-19 and has not slowed down since nor has the adoption of social networks and media that over the past two decades have changed how humans connect and engage with each other. 
 
When the Pew Research Center began tracking social media adoption in 2005, just 5% of American adults used at least one of these platforms. By 2011 that share had risen to half of all Americans, and in 2021 72% of Americans reported using some type of social media. Ad-driven social media sites have made it infinitely easier to create new “human” connections — but research has shown that adults with high social media use seem to feel more socially isolated than their counterparts with lower social media use.
 
We are all connected it seems—and yet, we are more disconnected than ever.  

Read Full Article

 
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