From December 1, family doctors will be able to approve five days of sick leave without a specialist examination

New criteria for determining temporary incapacity for work are expected to take effect on December 1. Silvana Andov, director of the Health Insurance Fund’s control department, announced that family doctors will be able to independently approve five days of sick leave, instead of the seven days currently allowed.

According to Andov, the final version of the regulation has been sent to the Management Board for approval. It must then receive the consent of the Ministry of Health and be published in the Official Gazette in order to enter into force on December 1. The diagnostic criteria have not been revised since 2012.

The changes come at a time when there are widespread suspicions of fraudulent sick leave in the public sector, while inspections have uncovered a significant increase in irregularities. Andov said that between 2021 and 2025, the number of patients increased by 6.7 percent, while the number of sick leaves issued rose by 33.4 percent.

This year alone, 326 requests for extraordinary inspections have been submitted: 110 from the public sector and 56 from the private sector. According to her, employers have also reported cases of people on active sick leave who were photographed at beaches or organizing weddings. She also mentioned an increase in X-ray examinations and sick leave among younger employees shortly before the summer season.

Group requests to verify suspicious sick leaves have also been submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, involving 84 people, and to the Ministry of Defense, involving 51 people. A high rate of absences has also been recorded among mid-level medical staff in the healthcare sector.

Andov explained that the period during which a family doctor may open a sick leave based solely on symptoms and clinical guidelines, without specialist findings, will be reduced from seven to five days. The measure is intended to prevent cases in which patients changed their diagnosis every seven days without undergoing an examination.

For certain diagnoses, family doctors will continue to manage sick leave themselves for up to 15 days, based solely on laboratory findings and without a specialist consultation. These include influenza, acute respiratory tract infections, viral enteritis and some gynecological conditions.

Andov rejected claims that sick leave would become a form of house arrest or that the police would inspect citizens’ homes. She stressed that there are no plans for police officers to go door to door.

According to her, the Health Insurance Fund has previously had the legal right to conduct an on-site inspection of an insured person following a report by an employer, when there are suspicions concerning active sick leave. No police interventions are planned with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the future, the aim is to create, through memorandums, an electronic data-exchange system that could, for example, show whether a person on active sick leave had registered an exit from the country.