Change in sick leave: What changes with the new eAU procedure

Created: 12/01/2022 10:43 am

By: Kilian Bäuml

Employees should be able to call in sick faster and easier in the future.

With the eAU procedure, sick leave can be digitized.

Frankfurt – So far, employees have been obliged to submit a certificate of incapacity for work within three days.

So far, this has only been printed out and presented to the employer in paper form.

From 2023, the certificate should go digitally directly to the employer.

The new system is called the eAU procedure – “e” for electronic, “AU” for incapacity to work.

All practices must switch to the new procedure by the end of the current year.

There was already a change last year and a yellow AU certificate was introduced.

These new changes result from the new eAU procedure:

Paper sick notes are obsolete.

(symbol photo) © Imago

Changes to sick leave: This is the eAU procedure

With the eAU procedure, practices electronically transmit the certificate of incapacity to work to the health insurance company on the day of the practice visit.

This provides the employer with the data electronically.

"The version for employers can be called up at the health insurance companies if required," said Helge Dickau from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds.

Insured persons do not receive any information about this.

First, the procedure for persons with statutory health insurance will be introduced.

Private practitioners and patients, practitioners abroad, rehabilitation facilities and physiotherapists and psychotherapists are not yet involved in the process.

Reporting sick with the eAU procedure: "An important step"

The eAU is intended to reduce bureaucracy and paperwork, thereby relieving the insured.

It is "an important step towards a paperless practice," said Dickau.

Irregularities are still expected during the introductory phase.

For employees, however, this makes no difference: "Since the employee is not to blame for this, he must not suffer any disadvantage."

For the time being, employees and employers will also receive a printed version in addition to the digital sick note.

For the transitional period, employees are recommended to insist on this if there are problems with the system, recommends Alexander Bredereck, a specialist lawyer for labor law.

With the printed sick note, the employee can also prove his or her incapacity to work if the employer doubts it.

eAU procedure: This remains the same with the new system for reporting sick

If a person needs a sick note, they must still go to a practice in good time and take care of it.

It also remains the same that the employee must inform the employer about the illness himself.

This also applies to the probable duration of the inability to work.

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The employer only finds out from the sick note in which practice the employee was.

"He only finds out whether the continued inability to work or a new inability to work is due to the same illness," said Alexander Bredereck, a specialist lawyer for labor law.

The system should only work through certified systems to ensure data protection.

(kiba/dpa)