If the proposal to amend the relevant law is adopted, the general practice doctor will in the future be able to sign a sick leave for a patient for a maximum of two weeks, and not, as was the case until now, for two months.
According to announcements, this news will not apply to patients who have just had a complex cardiac surgery, but also to cancer patients who are going through several months of therapy.
A special commission will be in charge of approving sick leave longer than two weeks.
The proposal to amend the Health Insurance Law has already been prepared. “One of the reasons is to prevent the possibility of abuse, and in this way, the commission would have insight into the course of the disease and decide on the length of sick leave that is justified. People who are really sick should not worry about this, because the commission will determine whether someone is really sick and how much time they need to recover”, a source from the Serbian government says.
Health Minister Danica Grujičić stated that companies had major objections to the possibility of someone being on sick leave for two months without being verified by the commission and that it took exactly 58 days for the largest number of patients to become healthy again.
“It is clear what this is about. I hope that we will be able to prevent possible abuses. Exceptions are cancer patients undergoing several months of therapy or patients who have just been discharged from the hospital after major cardiac surgery. We will start to control sick leave more”, Grujicic told Politika daily.
Changing the law and applying the amendments requires time, however, until it is implemented, the employer can always perform checks on employees who are on sick leave.
If the employer suspects that the sick leave is not justified, they have the legal possibility to check it, which can be done via medical commissions, but it is also possible to file an objection to the assessment of the chosen doctor, as well as ask for an opinion from another medical expert on the issue.
(Blic, 07.08.2023)
This post is also available in: Italiano