Electronic certificate of incapacity for work: Digital sick note made easy

In January 2023, an electronic certificate of incapacity for work, i.e. a digital sick note, will be introduced for the first time. You can find out how this works and what you need to know here.

How the electronic certificate of incapacity to work works as a digital sick note

When you wake up with a cold and realise you can’t work, you usually go to the doctor and get a sick note. Now you don’t have to worry about your sick note getting lost in the post. Whatever illness you have caught, you can now access the digital sick note, which means that the employer has your temporary incapacity to work electronically.

• From January 2023, you as an employee will be able to do without the familiar yellow slip of sick note that you normally have to hand over to your employer when you are off sick.

• A digital sick note will now take its place.

• For your employer, this means that they have to call up your absence separately from your health insurance fund. There, the information of the duration of the incapacity for work after the doctor’s visit is available.

• This new regulation comes into force for all employees with statutory insurance, but not for those with private insurance. For the latter, the sick leave notification still remains on paper.

• No matter when your employer requests your sick note, combined with a doctor’s visit, he must retrieve the new digital certificate on his own initiative, because he will not receive an automatic notice.

• If you are the employer, you may need a little patience, because the information transmitted from the doctor’s office to the health insurance fund may take some time to process. For example, you can request the digital sickness notification from the respective health insurance fund at the earliest one day after being informed that your employee is unfit for work.

• However, as an employee who is ill, you will still receive a paper notice from your attending doctor for your use.

• As an employee, you should still be prepared to deliver your sick note to your employer in paper form at the beginning, as employers’ systems will have to adapt to the new digital way.
• Of course, despite everything, you must let your employer know immediately if you do not turn up for work. The only thing they have to take care of is the sick note issued by your doctor.