Alexandru Rafila recommends the National Health Insurance Agency (CNAS) to check more thoroughly the way medical leaves are granted, according to the legal obligation.
Medical leaves remain in the attention of Alexandru Rafila – Photo Gov.ro
The way in which medical leaves are granted remains under the attention of the Ministry of Health. Alexandru Rafila requests the National Health Insurance House to check “more” the way some doctors grant medical leave, according to Agerpres.
“Medical leave is a right of any employee, when he has a certain condition that makes it impossible to carry out his work, to receive an income that allows him to live during the period in which he is on leave. The first thing that must be done is to operationalize a legal provision that is in the CNAS Statute that has the right and obligation to control where a “red flag” appears, i.e. someone who prescribes extremely many medical leaves or someone who benefits from a lot of medical leaves Of course, there are also conditions that are very serious – oncological, cardiovascular, accidents where medical leave is needed, but this needs to be checked more“, said Alexandru Rafila on Thursday evening, on Antena 3.
In recent years, 50 controls were carried out at the national level in 42 counties, approximately one per year, according to the Minister of Health.
“It is not stimulating in any way. I think that this is the way that should keep a little under control a possible excessive prescription of sick leaves by some doctors. But I would not like to start from the premise that this is systematic, but that it can occur, it must be checked whether or not there are real circumstances of extended leave prescription. In the end, the payer has to control this, ie CNAS, and keep control of the expenses he makes” Rafila added.
Approximately 6 billion lei have been paid for all medical leaves granted in 2022, he also said.
Recently, the president of CNAS, Valeria Herdea said that “we cannot talk about a very large number of medical leaves, but about the fact that there is a state of illness, of morbidity” and that “The population is really sick“.
Moreover, the head of CNAS said that the number of medical leaves decreased from more than 4 million leaves in 2022 to just over 3.3 million leaves in 2023.
Moreover, the assessment made at the level of family doctors' offices is at the end and they have been found “under 1% slips”after the verification of family doctors was done on a sample basis.
For his part, researcher Octavian Jurma drew attention to the fact that the number of medical leaves granted in our country is lower than in other European countries.
“First of all, I would like to know what an acceptable limit means for the PSD-PNL Minister of Health, Mr. Alexandru Rafila? Let's be like France, where 15% of the workforce is absent from work? Let's be like Germany, where 9% of the workforce is absent from work? In Romania, however, only 2.4% of the workforce is absent from work! In order for Romania to reach the European average, the Romanians should be missing 4x more than they are already missing! If the lowest rate of absenteeism in Europe is an “unbearable limit”, what is the bearable limit, that is not what Mr. Alexandru Rafila told us. Let it be half, so 1%, let it be 0.5%? How does he plan to do this, are we going to see people with IVs after them at work?“, wrote Octavian Jurma on Facebook.
