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Doctors may be required to refer frequent cases of sick leave to a committee
Additional testing should help identify people with symptoms early and conduct timely testing. It can also help determine whether a person should be transferred to another job due to health reasons.
The Ministry of Health wants to oblige doctors to transfer data on patients who were issued sick leave certificates four times in six months to a special commission. It is known that this will improve the quality of medical care.
According to the Ministry of Health, the conclusion of the medical commission determines whether the patient is capable of performing professional activities or whether he needs to switch to another profession. Or perhaps the patient needs disability. The innovation does not affect sick leave for treatment, medical rehabilitation, socially significant diseases (tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis, malignant tumors, etc.).
Lyudmila Lapa, a general practitioner and CEO of the Khodanova Medical Center for Immuno-Orthodontics, said that such a practice has already taken place recently.
Virtual sick leave has become a disaster for the German economy. At least, large German companies blame the "lazy" Generation Z for their economic problems. As the American magazine Fortune wrote, the average German takes more than two weeks of sick leave per year. This is three times more than the average British resident.
In Germany, you can get six weeks of fully paid sick leave. And young people are starting to take advantage of these provisions, company executives complain.
Business FM correspondent Maria Volkova from Germany explains why Germans are starting to take sick leave more often.
Maria Volkova. Business FM German Correspondent It started after corona, and the number is increasing every year. Of course, the German economy is losing a lot of money because of this. Just recently, in October, the head of Mercedes-Benz said that the incidence rate in Germany is very high, sometimes twice as high as in other European countries. It is very easy to get sick leave here. If you go to the doctor and say: "I feel bad", you are not at all limited by the fact that, for example, the doctor must first give you this. Leave for 3 days. He could say: "Come back in ten days." Also in Germany, during flu epidemics, you can call in sick. The Germans are considered to maintain order and do everything according to the rules, but since they have these rules, they use them very well.
A study by Germany's largest health insurance fund found that workers missed an average of 19 days of work due to illness last year. That's an all-time high. Germany's economy is also set to shrink by 0.3% in 2023. And if the infection rate hadn't been so high, it could have grown by around 0.5%.