It is a measure that will make life easier for citizens and avoid thousands of medical appointments. Starting next Monday, workers will no longer have to go to the doctor to request short-term (up to three days) sick leave, with a self-certification under oath to justify their absence, which they will now be able to do. Request in the SNS portal 24.
But there are limits – it will only be possible to do this twice a year – and the employer will be able to check the “correctness” of the self-agent declaration of disease in SNS 24, showing to PÚBLICO the Joint Services of the Ministry of Health (SPMS), which has developed the services necessary to enter this The measure goes into effect, which covers “any worker 16 years of age or older as of May 1st.”
Disease self-declaration – which resulted from the amendment of Article 254 of the Labor Code and is one of the measures included in the Decent Work Program package approved by the National Assembly of the Republic – It allows you to justify absence and replace a certificate of temporary disability issued by a doctor in the first three days of illness.
This measure will make it possible to reduce the bureaucratic workload of doctors, since andVII that, annually, about 600,000 consultations are to be carried out for the issuance of temporary incapacity for work within a period of up to three days.
The leave can be for only one or two days and does not involve costs for the state or the employer, given that the worker does not receive salary or sick pay in this case, the medical certificate issued in health centers is only used in order to avoid unjustified absence.
There will be three alternative ways to request self-declaration of illness: the worker can request it in the personal area of the SNS 24 portal, in the SNS 24 app, or even in the event that digital issuance is not possible, via the SNS 24 line (808 24 24 24).
After that, it will be up to the worker to inform the employer of the absence due to illness, and to provide him with the access code that he received via SMS or e-mail After issuing the self-declaration, SPMS identifies.
He adds that if the employer wants to “confirm the validity of the self-declaration”, he can access the SNS 24 portal “and confirm that it is valid”, and fill in the relevant data.
Victims in the past at the hands of private doctors
Passed in the Assembly of the Republic last February by votes in favor of PS and the Left Block, this measure results from a shift to labor law to a practice that began during the pandemic, when SNS Line 24 began issuing hits for the disease. COVID-19 related or justifications for preventive isolation without having to go to the doctor.
After criticism from the former president of the Doctors’ Syndicate, PS changed the initial proposal – It was specified that the self-certification must be made under the Worker’s Honor Pledge and may only be issued when the illness does not exceed three consecutive days, and a maximum of twice a year.
The new mechanism was proposed by the executive director of SNS, Fernando Araujo, who said, in an interview with SIC in early January, that it had been considered, stressing that it was a change “needed for more than 20 years”.
But Fernando Araujo wants to go further to make life easier for his compatriots. Last week, when submitting sustainable health indexHe revealed that the Ministry of Health is working with Social Security to issue certificates of temporary disability (for a longer period) in emergency cases in hospitals and also by private sector doctors, in addition to family doctors in health centers. He justified this by saying: “It is not logical for the patient, after going to the emergency room, to go to his health center to request a temporary disability certificate.”
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