Electronic sick leave hardly works so far

Electronic sick leave, which was recently introduced, does not seem to be working. Many companies complain about the bureaucratic effort involved, as well as the increasing uncertainty caused by delays in retrieving sick notes.

Association The Family Entrepreneurs offers criticism

Recently, the association The Family Entrepreneurs has been critical of the new system of reporting incapacity for work. On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Justice, the association conducted a survey on the biggest bureaucratic obstacles among its members. The electronic sickness notification was mentioned again and again. Reinhold von Eben-Worlée, chairman of the association, commented as follows: “In practice, the new system unfortunately does not work at all”. The association’s survey makes it clear that the data arrives at many companies either too late or not at all.

The electronic sick note is intended to reduce the workload for employees. Until now, they had to send their sick notes by mail to both the health insurance company and their employer. These two steps are now to be eliminated. Instead, the practice sending the sick note will send it to the health insurance company, which will make it available to the employer with a delay of five days.

Many practices, however, do not yet participate in this system or state that the sick note should also be sent by mail as a precaution. This not infrequently results in a duplication of effort for companies that receive sick notes more than once. In addition, however, there is another, far more pressing problem: In some cases, the call for sick notes via the health insurance companies does not work or only works much later than actually intended. In addition, only the statutory health insurance funds participate in this system, and children’s sick pay is not covered. As a result, numerous processes must continue to be processed according to the old procedure – which in turn means a duplication of effort, since two systems must be operated simultaneously.

Electronic sick leave: FDP aims to change the law

The FDP is therefore striving for a change in the law that would further advance digitization, which has not worked so far, and completely abolish the conventional alternative. It advocates, for example, that private health insurers also be integrated into the new system. Furthermore, she wants to ensure that the health insurance companies not only make the certificates of incapacity for work retrievable, but also forward them to the companies independently. How this is supposed to work without increasing personnel capacities at the health insurance companies and without implementing new electronic systems again was not an issue addressed by FPD member of parliament Maximilian Funke-Kaiser, who proposes to write appropriate solutions into the planned digital law of the Ministry of Health.