How to close a sick leave: basis, who closes, step-by-step procedure for closing

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A sick leave certificate is a document issued by medical institutions that allows employees not to appear at the workplace without consequences. Sick time is paid by the employer and the Social Insurance Fund, so strict requirements are imposed on disability forms. What are the terms of sick leave in 2021, where they are fixed and what they depend on, we will tell you in the article.

What are the grounds for closing sick leave?

A certificate of incapacity for work is opened by the attending physician, paramedic, or dentist. After a certain period of time it must be closed.

There are several reasons for closing sick leave:

Employee recovery. After examination and regular examination, the doctor makes a conclusion about the patient’s health condition. If the disease is cured, the injury has healed, and the body has fully recovered, a decision is made to complete the treatment. At the same time, the employee is closed with a certificate of incapacity for work and is informed of the date of return to work.
Recovery of a child or disabled relative of an employee. If an employee took sick leave to care for a sick child or relative, the decision to close the certificate of incapacity for work is made in the same way after examination and final examination of the patient.
The maximum period of sick leave has reached. It happens that the disease continues for a long time, and therefore the certificate of incapacity for work is extended several times. After filling out all the columns allocated for extension, the certificate of incapacity for work is closed. If the maximum period of sick leave has not expired, the medical worker opens another certificate of incapacity for work and hands the closed one to the employee.
Patient request for early closure. An employee who has not fully recovered may ask for early closure of the certificate of incapacity for work. For example, when going on sick leave during a business trip and maintaining minor symptoms of the disease. However, the final decision depends on the doctor, since he is responsible for the life and health of the patient. If there are serious health problems, sick leave will be denied.

Duration of payment of sick leave benefits

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The duration of the sick leave period that will be paid varies depending on the disease, injury, or surgical intervention. In some cases, the Order establishes other periods of incapacity for work (see table below).

Type of disease	Term to be paid
Sanatorium-resort treatment immediately after medical care in a hospital	The entire period, but not more than 24 calendar days. For tuberculosis - the entire period without restrictions
Quarantine	For the entire quarantine period
Employee illness or injury	The entire period of incapacity for work (up to 15 calendar days + extension by decision of the medical commission)
Prosthetics according to medical indications	The entire period of release from work, including travel time there and back
Illness or injury of a disabled employee	No more than 4 months in a row and no more than 5 months a year From January 1, 2022, there is only one restriction - no more than 5 months a year
Illness or injury of an employee with a fixed-term contract (up to 6 months)	No more than 75 calendar days while the employment contract is valid
Tuberculosis	The entire period of illness

Let us take a special look at the benefits that parents and guardians receive. These include sick leave for child care, disability for pregnancy and childbirth, adoption of a baby, etc.

Child care up to 7 years old	The entire period of illness, but no more than 90 calendar days per year
Child care 7-15 years old	15 days for each case, but not more than 45 calendar days per year
Caring for a family member over 15 years of age	7 days for each case, but not more than 30 calendar days per year
Caring for a disabled child under 18 years of age	For the entire duration of treatment, but not more than 120 days a year
Caring for a child under 18 years of age if the illness is associated with a post-vaccination complication or HIV infection	The entire period of incapacity
Pregnancy and childbirth	140 days
For complications during childbirth, early labor between 22 and 30 weeks	156 days
Multiple pregnancy	194 days
Adoption up to 3 months	70 days (one child) 110 days (two or more children)
Termination of pregnancy before 21 weeks, birth of a still fetus or a live fetus that does not survive 6 days	The entire period of incapacity, but not less than 3 days
In Vitro Fertilization	The entire period of treatment until the results of the procedure are determined and during travel to the medical facility and back

Who has the right to close the certificate of incapacity for work?

The sick leave is closed in the same medical institution where it was opened. A medical organization must have a license giving the right to engage in medical activities and expert temporary disability.

The list of specialists who have the right to close a certificate of incapacity for work includes:

Therapist;
paramedic;
dentist.

You should know! Not all medical organizations have the right to close sick leave. An ambulance, a blood transfusion station, a hospital emergency department, a mud bath, a disaster medicine center, and a forensic medical examination bureau are not vested with such powers.

How to apply for sick leave in 2021

How is sick leave paid after dismissal in 2021?

Who issues sick leave?

Sick leave is issued by medical organizations that have a license and the right to issue certificates of incapacity for work. Moreover, it is not necessary to have a clinic; there are private clinics with a license to issue sick leave. So this is:

Clinics.
Hospitals.
Private clinics.

IMPORTANT!
When issuing sick leave by a medical organization that does not have a license for this, the employer does not have the right to pay benefits and indicate days of incapacity in the work schedule. Therefore, there may be a number of consequences for the employee. The days will be counted as absenteeism, and you may be fined or even fired.

How to close a sick leave: step-by-step instructions

To close the certificate of incapacity for work, a number of sequential actions are taken:

The employee visits the doctor.
The sick leave form is filled out.
A certificate of incapacity for work is registered.
The document is signed and sealed.

Let's look at each stage in more detail.

Step 1 – Visiting the Doctor

To close a sick leave, a citizen turns to the attending physician, paramedic, or dentist. In this case, it is not necessary to contact the medical professional who opened the bulletin, since upon opening only the date is put, without the specialist’s signature and seal.

The patient comes to any doctor according to the profile of his disease. For example, to a therapist, surgeon, orthopedist, gynecologist. Based on the results of the examination and on the basis of analyzes and studies, a conclusion is made that the patient has recovered.

Step 2 – Filling out a sick leave certificate

If the patient has regained health and intends to go to another medical institution to continue treatment, the medical worker fills out a form for a certificate of incapacity for work.

At the doctor's request, the patient provides the following documents:

passport;
SNILS;
medical insurance;
information about the place of registration;
information about the employer.

The sick leave certificate contains the doctor’s full name, his position, the closing date and the start date of work.

Step 3 – Registration of sick leave

Closed sick leave is registered in a special journal, which is a strict reporting form. It indicates the number of the certificate of incapacity for work and the date of issue.

If the certificate of incapacity for work is issued in electronic form, all the necessary information is entered into a special program. The citizen is given a printout with the sick leave number and the date of its closure.

Certificate of incapacity for work

Step 4 – Signing and stamping

When filling out a sick leave certificate on paper, it must be certified by the doctor’s signature and stamps.

Several stamps are placed on the sick leave:

personal seal of the doctor;
official seal of the medical institution;
triangular print.

After signing and stamping, the procedure for closing the sick leave is completed. The completed document is issued to the patient for presentation to the accounting department at the place of employment or directly to the Social Insurance Fund.

Terms and procedure for payment of electronic sick leave

An electronic certificate of incapacity for work, or, as it is also called, an electronic sick leave certificate, has become officially operational in Russia since mid-2021. At the request of the insured person and with his written permission, a document indicating temporary disability can be issued by a medical organization in electronic form. Electronic sick leave is recognized as equivalent to paper sick leave, and the amount of its payment does not depend on the chosen form.

The technology for processing and issuing electronic sick leave does not require either printing the document or sending it directly from the medical organization to the employer. The interaction between the employee, the employer and the medical institution occurs through the FSS information system - UIIS "Sotsstrakh". It stores the electronic sick leave from creation to closure.

Not only public clinics and hospitals can create a sick leave certificate electronically, but also private ones, for example, clinics connected under VHI.

Electronic sick leave: how to apply for an employee

What steps must an employee go through to receive sick leave in a paperless format?

As mentioned at the beginning, electronic sick leave can only be issued by workers after submitting a written application to the medical institution. The attending physician must give the employee a form for such an application, and he, in turn, must fill it out. The sick person informs the medical organization about SNILS.

After the doctor “closes” the sick leave sheet (as he “discharges” the patient), the medical organization will create an electronic sick leave sheet in the Social Insurance Unified Information System and fill out its part in it. The doctor will give the employee a special coupon, which will contain the number of the electronic sick leave certificate. The employee does not need to receive anything else from the medical institution - no stamps, no signatures.

All that is then required from the employee is to transfer the electronic sick leave number to the employer - to the appropriate service, usually human resources. You do not need to provide the ticket itself.

Electronic sick leave: what an employer must do to start working

The transition to electronic certificates of incapacity for work is voluntary for the employer; no sanctions are provided for working with these documents only in paper form.

We will consider the procedure for connecting electronic sick leave certificates below.

The first thing that needs to be done is to conclude an agreement with the FSS to begin information interaction.

The second necessary and mandatory action is to buy an enhanced qualified electronic signature. Then install an electronic sick leave verification program at the workplaces of employees who will work with electronic sick leave technology.

Taxcom Certification Center offers various electronic signatures, including for B2G document flow and reporting to government agencies.

The third step is to purchase software from which the organization's employees will work with this electronic document. You can use both software provided by the state (for example, the personal account of an FSS policyholder) and special accounting programs and services. Such software is provided by many EDF operators. We’ll talk about Taxcom’s solutions for exchanging data and documents with the Social Insurance Fund in the field of electronic sick leave below.

The final step is to inform all employees of the organization that they can start requesting sick leave from a doctor electronically.

An electronic sick leave number has been received from an employee: what to do next?

After the employer has received the number of the electronic sick leave sheet, he must use the above-mentioned specialized software to find the sheet in the Social Insurance Unified Information System.

After a successful search for sick leave, it is requested from the FSS. In the document, fill in all the columns in the “To be completed by the employer” section. The electronic version of the sick leave sheet contains the same columns as the printed one.

After filling out, you need to put an electronic signature on the document and save it. The data will be automatically sent to the Social Insurance Fund and the employer will be able to make sick leave payments. This procedure applies to regions that have not yet switched to direct payments from the Social Insurance Fund under the pilot project.

Who should pay sick leave

Sick leave is paid by both the employer and the Social Insurance Fund. Depends on whether the first one is on direct payments or works on a credit basis.

In the first case, the first 3 days of incapacity are paid by the employer, the remaining days by the Social Insurance Fund.

In the second case, when using the credit system, the sick leave is paid by the organization in full, and the Social Insurance Fund will reimburse its expenses afterwards.

How electronic sick leave is paid: terms

Payment for an electronic sick leave is the same as for a paper one; the selected option does not affect the assignment of benefits.

The procedure for paying for electronic sick leave is as follows. If the organization is located in a region of the Russian Federation in which the “Direct Payments” pilot project is not being implemented, then within 10 days from receiving the sick leave number from the employee, the employer assigns a benefit. He calculates the amount of the benefit and indicates it in certain columns of the document. The payments themselves for electronic sick leave are made with the next salary - that is, similar to the procedure for paying sick leave on paper.

If the employer is located in a region participating in the FSS pilot project, then the payment procedure changes slightly. Within up to 5 days, the employer is obliged to transfer information about the employee to the Social Insurance Fund, and within up to 10 days, the Social Insurance Fund must pay sick leave.

Payment for electronic sick leave: how the payment is calculated

In addition to the fact that you need to understand how sick leave is paid, you also need to know how to pay for electronic sick leave, what formulas to use? Let us remind you that both electronic and paper sick leave are paid exactly the same.

Sick leave payments depend on the minimum wage established in the country. The minimum cost of a sick day starts from this amount.

For those employees who have an official total work experience of more than eight years, sick leave is paid according to the standard formula: average employee earnings X 24 months / 730 days = the cost of one day of earnings. It turns out that the payment is made as for the day worked, that is, 100 percent.

To calculate the total amount of payment, it is enough to multiply the average daily income received by the number of days indicated on sick leave.

If the employee’s work experience is less than eight years, then special coefficients will help in calculating payments for electronic sick leave.

With experience up to six months

The cost of one day of sick leave will be calculated based on the minimum wage established for the year.

With experience from six months to five years

the entire amount of sick leave payments will be calculated as 60% of the calculated average cost of one day.

With five to eight years

the entire amount of sick leave payments will be calculated as 80% of the calculated average cost of one day.

What is important: if sick leave is issued to an employee due to an occupational disease, work injury or pregnancy and childbirth, then the above coefficients do not apply. Sick leave in such situations is paid at 100 percent.

Average earnings are calculated for the two years preceding the employee receiving sick leave.

What Taxcom offers for working with electronic sick leave certificates

Document flow for electronic sick leave is available in all Taxcom reporting solutions, but we will focus on the simplest and most lightweight web account, Online Sprinter. It does not require the installation of additional programs; all work takes place online in the browser via a secure connection.

Working with electronic sick leave in the service is not at all difficult. Go to “Create reports and documents”, select “FSS”, “Sick leave”.

The sprinter will issue all forms of documents for working with electronic sick leave certificates. When filling out, the service will indicate the fields that are required. The error checking system will indicate incorrectly completed or missing fields, and the user will be able to return to the document to correct them before sending it to the regulatory authority.

In addition to reporting, Sprinter has functionality for electronic document management with counterparties (B2B).

Reporting to HR

Electronic sick leave document flow is part of the personnel document flow in an enterprise. Often, HR officers have to work not only with sick leave, but also with other reporting - for example, to the Pension Fund. Not long ago, a new form for reporting to this regulatory body appeared - SZV-TD.

Taxcom offers the “Personnel” tariff, which, in addition to the exchange of electronic documents with the Social Insurance Fund (for filling out electronic certificates of incapacity for work), includes an exchange with the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation (for submitting SZV-TD reports on electronic work books). The kit also includes a CEP.

You can find out more about personnel reporting and order a tariff in a special section of the Taksky website.

Is it possible to take sick leave on a day off?

In practice, the question arises whether it is possible to close sick leave on a day off in order to start work on Monday.
To close a certificate of incapacity for work, it is necessary that the medical organization operates and the doctor sees patients. Today, many clinics provide appointments on Saturday and Sunday. When applying during reception hours, the sick leave will be closed according to the general rules. The medical professional will fill in all the necessary information. Indicate a day off as the date for closing the certificate of incapacity for work, and as the day of return to work - the first working day following it.

When is sick leave issued?

Have you ever wondered under what circumstances sick leave may not be given? To answer this question, we will first analyze the situations in which sick leave is opened, and also consider its types and the benefits due to the sick person. Under what circumstances is sick leave opened?

Disease.
Injuries.
Pregnancy and childbirth.
Caring for a child up to one and a half years old.
Quarantine.
Illness of a close relative (if there is no one else to care for him) or a child.

Is it possible to close a certificate of incapacity for work retroactively?

Closing sick leave “retroactively” implies the execution and issuance of a document on the day it was opened. This method is used in exceptional cases:

during pregnancy;
citizens who have young children aged 7 years with a serious illness;
employees who are under 15 years of age are disabled or have HIV.

It happens that a citizen works on a shift schedule and needs to go out on a day when the doctor is officially off. In such a situation, the certificate of incapacity for work is closed in advance on the doctor’s last working day before his day off.

What happens if you don’t close your sick leave?

It is important to apply for closure of the sick leave certificate in a timely manner, since the basis for calculating temporary disability benefits is a correctly completed and closed sick leave certificate.

In the absence of sick leave, the Social Insurance Fund will refuse to pay benefits for the period of forced absence from the workplace. In addition, the employer has the right to recognize sick days as absenteeism due to failure to provide documents confirming valid reasons.

You should also ensure that the sick leave certificate is completed correctly, otherwise it will be declared invalid and the employee will have to apply for a new form.

Possible consequences

Is it necessary to close this paper on time with a doctor at the clinic, even if it is not needed, and also what will happen if this is done and can one be held responsible for it?

For employee

If a person, due to lack of time or unwillingness to stand in line, does not complete the paperwork to the end, then he has no right to count on receiving money from the Social Insurance Fund for the period during which he received outpatient or inpatient treatment (in accordance with the provisions of Federal Law No. 255 dated December 29, 2006).

The employer may reprimand him, fine him or even fire him for the lack of this official confirmation of temporary disability due to illness. He also has reason to doubt the authenticity of the document provided, which does not contain a doctor’s note about the completion of treatment or discharge and the seal of a medical institution.

The employee will have to prove that the form is not counterfeit by independently paying for a special examination that will analyze this document to determine whether it is real or fake.

For the manager

If the management of an organization where a citizen who is ill and absent from work is officially employed accepts from him an incomplete or incorrectly filled out medical certificate, as well as a false document with deliberately false information about the disease, then when checking by the labor inspectorate, if discovered of this fact, a fine may be imposed for negligence in working documentation and personnel matters.