Today's Practice: Changing the Business of Medicine National Edition Q1 2018 | Page 67

looking beyond
the benefit of the doubt
TIPS FOR CONTESTING
UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
By Paul Edwards & Jennie McLaughlin, J.D.
What should you do when an employee resigns but later changes their story
in an attempt to receive unemployment benefits? We get questions about this
quite often. The employee resigns because they are moving, got a new job,
want to go back to school, or didn’t think it was a good fit – or maybe they
didn’t even give a reason for resignation. When this happens, you should
definitely dispute the unemployment eligibility, if for no other reason than to
clear up the record as to why the employee stopped working at your practice.
When an employee resigns, generally the only way that the employee will be
eligible for unemployment is if it was a “constructive discharge.” Meaning,
circumstances were so unbearable that the employee had no reasonable
choice but to resign. An obvious example of a constructive discharge would
be if the employee was subjected to ongoing harassment in the workplace and
nothing was being done about it. In a situation of that sort, the employee
shouldn’t have to put up with that unlawful behavior, and therefore it’s
reasonable to resign and unemployment benefits may be available.
Imagine that the employee tells unemployment that she quit because the
doctors were disrespectful to her and it was not a comfortable working
environment. If you don’t dispute it, and the employee tries going even
further and files a discrimination complaint, you can count on the employee’s
attorney using the record from the unemployment hearing to show that the
practice did not bother to dispute what the employee was claiming.
TODAY’S PRA C T I C E: C HA NGI NG T HE BUS I NES S OF M EDI CINE
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