If you offer high deductible health plans (HDHPs), health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs) or 401(k) plans, your plans are subject to inflation-adjusted dollar limits.

The following is a list of plan limit increases for 2019. It does not include limits that are staying the same from 2018. Read More

The ACA imposes a dollar limit on employees’ salary reduction contributions to health flexible spending accounts (FSAs) offered under cafeteria plans. This dollar limit is indexed for cost-of-living adjustments and may be increased each year.

New Limit Amount

In November 2018, the IRS increased the FSA contribution limit from $2,650 to $2,700 for taxable years beginning in 2019. This increase reflects the steady contribution limit increase from the past few years. Read More

Here are some of the must-have items you should keep in the workplace, according to the Harris study:

• • Tissues
• • Hand soap
• • Cough drops
• • Cold medicine
• • Pain reliever
• • Vitamin C
• • Hand sanitizer

Developing a Prevention Plan

A flu prevention strategy will look different depending on the workplace, but it’s critical that you have one. When developing your plan, consider aspects like offering free flu shots and communicating effective flu prevention methods to employees.

Deutsch & Associates, LLC has the prevention and strategy resources to help you develop your flu plan. Moreover, we have ready-to-go materials you can use to educate employees, like posters, videos and short articles.

Speak with us today about developing a plan that will work for your company. Together, we can make sure your employees stay healthy and productive this flu season.

Last year was the first flu season to be classified as high severity across all age groups, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This shows that no one can afford to ignore flu prevention. With that in mind, what are you doing to fight the flu?

Flu by the Numbers

According to a recent survey from Harris Insights & Analytics, 66 percent of people still go to work when they have the flu. Knowing this, it’s safe to assume some of your co-workers and employees will be coming to work while ill. You need a flu prevention strategy in place to reduce the damage.

Prepping the Workplace for the Flu

Since it’s difficult to stop people from coming into work, you need certain amenities to help the rest of the workplace fend off the flu. Read More

Even though the brain and the heart are located far from one another in the body, they are intrinsically connected and have a significant impact on how each other functions.

The two organs communicate via the muscular walls around the heart, which are connected to the brain in the circulatory system. As the brain releases hormones telling the body what to do, receptor cells in your blood vessels pick up these messages. In addition, there are nerve endings that travel from the brain to the muscular walls of the heart. These nerves send messages to the muscle tissue to either relax or contract.

Since these two organs communicate, mental health can have a dramatic effect on heart health and vice versa.

Stress

The mind’s response to a perceived or actual threatening situation is known as stress. The body responds to the stress by increasing:

• • Blood pressure
• • Respiratory rate
• • Heart rate
• • Oxygen consumption
• • Blood flow to skeletal muscles
• • Perspiration
• • Muscle tone

Read More