New Rules for Sick Leaves – Employer Has no Right to Know Employee’s Illness

According to the new health insurance rules, the employer does not have the right to know what the employee is sick with. Instead, it is enough for the section where the diagnosis is written down to simply say: illness, workplace injury, child care of occupational disease. Up until a few months ago, workers were obliged to cite the disease code within the sick leave notice. Recently, this practice was stopped, and several other important changes when it comes to the relation of the patient/worker and the medical doctor have been announced as well.

Instead of the code, the notice now only has to feature one of the following: illness, workplace injury, child care of occupational disease. In addition to these descriptions, the employer may not seek additional information about the particular disease, which is clearly stated in the new health insurance rulebook.

What remains in the new rulebook is that the right to a 100% paid leave exists in the following cases: occupational disease or workplace injury, illness or complication related to pregnancy, voluntary organ, cell or tissue donation (but not voluntary blood donation), as well as the care for a sick or injured underage member of the immediate family in case of a grave illness or damage.

Let us remind that the Ministry of Health recently opened a tender that concerns the prescription of drugs. Practically, electronic drug prescriptions might be issued by medical specialists as well, following which they would be approved, also electronically, by general practitioners, which eKapija has written about before.

Ministarstvo zdravlja Republike Srbije

Ministry of Health

sick leave

sick leave code

health insurance rules