Romania’s New Medical Leave Regulations Might Be Enforced In May

Romania’s new conditions regarding medical leaves might come into force in May, as set in an emergency decree regulating this issue.

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The Romanian Health Ministry Wednesday organized a debate on the norms to apply an emergency decree amending the conditions to request medical leave.

Representatives of the Health Ministry, the National Health Insurance House, Patient Protection Association president Gheorghe Barbu and other people interested in the matter were present at the debate.

Barbu highlighted that the emergency decree breaches human rights, as it makes room for possible abuses, adding the law will be challenged if police is involved in checking patients who took medical leave. Barbu said the decree will not do away with frauds in the healthcare system.

The Romanian Government decided recently to tighten conditions for employees who can request a medical leave and will introduce a verification system and a higher penalty for people demanding such leaves without solid grounds.

Late March, Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc called on the Health Ministry to speed up a bill regulating medical leaves and introduce fines for people taking leaves without being ill. Boc also mentioned at the time that 100 employees of the country's privatization authority AVAS took medical leaves to avoid a salary cut.

In February, Boc said that over 100 AVAS employees demanded and received a medical leave, thus trying to avoid the country's new unitary wage law which stated a cut in their wages from 17,000 lei (EUR1=RON4.1355) to RON 2,500.

Following the prime minister's statements, the Health Ministry put forth a bill allowing authorities to check whether employees on the medical leave are indeed ill at home or in the hospital.

Under the bill, employees taking medical leave without being ill would lose their social security benefits for the leave period and fines would double for doctors issuing groundless medical leaves.

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