General practitioners are demanding that sick leave be maintained by telephone

HPhysicians and consumer advocates are calling for telephone calls to be retained sick note without visiting a doctor. “To put it bluntly: it’s no longer possible without the phone sick note,” said the deputy head of the German Association of General Practitioners, Nicola Buhlinger-Göpfarth, the editorial network Germany (RND). This applies in particular to the acute waves of infection, as there were last winter. If the possibility of sick leave by telephone was removed, the family doctor’s practices would come under “more and more pressure”.

The possibility of taking sick leave over the phone for mild cold symptoms, even without a visit to the practice, will end on Friday (March 31). It was a special regulation introduced during the Corona crisis by the joint federal committee of doctors, clinics and health insurance companies. Since the end of March 2020, it has been possible to write sick notes by phone almost continuously. This should reduce unnecessary contacts and avoid corona infections.

The Federal Association of Consumers (vzbv) also called for the regulation to be retained. Politicians and experts agreed that they had to learn from the corona pandemic and preserve what was tried and tested, said the association’s health expert, Thomas Moormann, to the RND. “Unfortunately, this is not the case with the telephone sick leave, which was practiced very successfully and which could definitely be described as an innovation,” he complained and called on the traffic light coalition to regulate its retention by law.