General practitioners have sharply criticized the plans of the red-black coalition, which propose abolishing telephone sick notes and mandating that sick leave certificates be submitted starting from the first day of absence.
Markus Blumenthal-Beier, the chairman of the General Practitioners Association, told the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” that these decisions are “absolutely catastrophic.” He stressed that accepting these changes would unleash a massive wave of bureaucracy upon their practices that would be almost impossible to manage. The physician further lamented that the coalition is not only appearing unbelievable with these completely unfounded decisions but is also passively accepting the complete overload of clinics.
According to the association chief, statistics and studies have clearly proven that switching to phone sick notes did not lead to more sick leave. He explained that the observed increase in statistics was merely a statistical effect, resulting from the electronic recording of leave, which made more cases visible in official data.
Blumenthal-Beier warns that the requirement for sick leave proof from day one would force millions of additional people to visit doctor’s offices just to obtain a certificate, which “makes no medical sense whatsoever.” He concluded that the consequence of this change would be longer waiting times for patients who genuinely require medical assistance.
