Incapacity for work

Employees must continue to report any incapacity for work to their employer. From 2023, however, employees with statutory health insurance will no longer be obliged to forward a medical certificate to their employer themselves. Instead, employers must request an eAU from the health insurance funds. This requires a system-checked payroll accounting program. The following are reported

• the name of the employee
• the beginning and end of the incapacity for work
• the date of the medical certificate of incapacity for work
• a sign for initial or follow-up message
• Details of a possible accident (including an accident at work) or its consequences

If you are ill for a longer period of time, your sick notes must be unbroken. This means that if you are on sick leave until Wednesday, you must return to the doctor on Thursday at the latest. The second time, the doctor can no longer write off sick retroactively. The following applies at weekends: if the sick bill is valid until Friday, it is sufficient to visit the doctor again on Monday to obtain another sick note. However, if you normally work at the weekend, you should make sure that you are on sick leave then too.

Your doctor has noted your diagnosis on the sick note for the health insurance fund in the form of a code, the so-called ICD diagnosis code. You can easily decipher the code with the help of our diagnosis information.