The Government has amended the legislation on granting the sick leave by introducing regulations that will enable more efficient verification of how these leaves are awarded, Health Minister Attila Cseke has announced.

The legislative act adopted today provides for measures to enable authorities to determine whether the person requesting sick leave needs, indeed, medical care. "We allow the payer of indemnities, the employer within the first five days, National Health Insurance House from the sixth day, so that together with police representatives, where appropriate, to check the presence of the patient at home or at the mentioned address. When medical certificate is approved, the insured will make a liability statement, which will indicate the address where he/she will be found and will assume this possibility of verification. This procedure to be regulated by a joint order of the Minister of Health and President of the National Health Insurance House is not to be found in the emergency ordinance, “Minister of Health has stated.
If the respective person with sick leave is not at the indicated address, a report will be completed by persons in charge of checking and the next day, he/she will not be paid sick leave, Minister Attila Cseke has stated.

Minister of Health stated that the emergency ordinance adopted today raised the limit amount of fines to be granted if it is found that legal provisions on sick leave granting were not observed.
The Emergency Ordinance also provides that the cumulative duration of sick leave granted by the family doctor for an insured may not exceed 30 calendar days in the last year, compared to 45 days as it was before.

Background Information
The Health Minister stated that abusive prescription of sick leaves has mushroomed in recent years: "If in 2006, of the whole health budget, 482 million EUR was spent on sick leave reimbursement - which meant 3% of all health budget, which is an exceptionally high percentage, in 2009, this figure reached 923 million RON, representing 6% of health budget. We want to stop this phenomenon and limit it only to patients who really need it and who will not be limited in the granting of this sick leave, “Minister Cseke Attila has explained.
Also, Minister of Health has argued that the need for such regulations and statistics last year, when "2,700,000 certificates were issued /.../ to not even 5 million employees. I mean, practically every second employee had sick leave". However, Minister Cseke Attila stated that the savings that will be made via the enforcement of the provisions adopted today stand at about 142 million lei, by the end of this year.