Slovenia adopts stricter sick leave checks to curb absenteeism

People on sick leave will be subjected to stricter checks under a new piece of legislation adopted by the National Assembly in a bid to fight absenteeism, which comes at a huge cost to Slovenia's public insurance purse.

When the GP approves sick leave to a person they will also have to specify the activity regime for that person and record it in their medical records. They will, for example, prescribe strict rest at home or give permission to go for walks, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

If the person abides by the prescribed regime will be checked by lay supervisors employed with the ZZZS, the public insurance fund manager. If caught out violating the instructions once, the person will be issued a warning, and every subsequent violation will carry a fine.

If the person is caught performing gainful activity while on sick leave, they will lose sick pay for 30 days, rather than for 30 days and the following month as initially proposed. So far, they have only lost their sick leave for that day, found to be performing gainful activity.

Controversy over lay supervision

The ZZZS already has lay supervisors to check whether persons on sick leave are at home, for example. However, such lay supervision is now determined by the law for the first time.

Jasna Humar, a state secretary at the Health Ministry, explains that so far, even if lay supervisors established violations, the person violating the rules would not in fact suffer any consequences.

The new rules and lay supervision have been raising controversy with some seeing them as too punitive. During debate in parliament preceding the vote on 17 December, Iva Dimic, an MP for the opposition New Slovenia (NSi), said lay supervisors reminded her of UDBA, the Yugoslav-era secret police. She suggested neighbours would be snitching on each other.

Humar countered by saying that the ZZZS had skilled lay supervisors, who would know exactly whom it would benefit to take a walk or whatever the doctors prescribe them.

Sara Žibrat, an MP for the ruling Freedom Movement, illustrated that it may mean that people on sick leave will not be allowed to go to their holiday home in Croatia, for example, which she said was what was happening.

Doctors unhappy

Objections against the law were also raised by the opposition Democrats (SDS), and the junior coalition Left party did not vote in favour either because their proposals were not adopted.

The Fides trade union of doctors and dentists is also unhappy, saying solutions had not been adopted in consultation with experts. Union representative Bojan Kostić told TV Slovenija that doctors would not be issuing orders to patients on whether they can leave their homes or not.

Slovenia is a European leader in terms of health-related absenteeism. The cost of pay compensation during sick leave has soared from below €400 million before the Covid pandemic to over €700 million this year.

The solutions on sick leave were adopted as part of a new package of emergency measures in healthcare, which also includes one-off financial aid for hospitals, a higher incentive to specialise in emergency medicine, and the option of contractual cooperation between public and private providers.

As reported by CE Report, Slovenia imposed stiffer fines for public order offences.

Photo: Nebojša Tejić/STA