The end of the sickie could be in sight

Feb 20 2008

The end of the 'sickie' could be in sight particularly for Brits. There are moves afoot in Britain to change what the health secretary Alan Johnson calls the sick-note culture.

The health secretary wants sick people to be assessed for what work they can do and says work is "generally good for people's health".

He will outline plans as to whether GPs should be used to issue 'well notes' rather than just sick notes; all part of the government's strategy to reduce the number of people on incapacity benefit and to find out what work sick people are capable of doing.

Mr Johnson believes incapacity benefit should not be a one-way street that starts in the GP's surgery and stops at the end of a lifetime on benefits.

Mr Johnson says the evidence shows that far from being bad for health, work is generally good for people's health and staying in work or returning to work is often in a patient's best interests.

Employers will be encouraged to run health clinics in a bid to cut the estimated 175 million working days lost to sickness each year, at a cost of £13bn.

However doctors groups say GPs should not be used to "police the system" and it is the changes to the GP sick certificate, to be piloted in the summer, which will prove most controversial.

GPs will also in future be expected to offer patients advice about what they can do to get fit for work.

GPs are currently responsible for signing people off for the first six months, before they are formally passed on to the centrally-administered incapacity benefits system.

Britain has one of the highest proportion of people on incapacity benefit in Europe and numbers have more than trebled since the 1970s to 2.7m.

The reforms will mean claimants will be expected to take part in programs aimed at getting them back into work.

British Gas and Parcelforce have seen reduced sickness rates after running advice sessions to manage back pain and mental health problems.

But the British Medical Association is concerned about GPs roles in the program and say confirming that a patient is unwell is very different from making a judgement on whether someone is well enough to do their job, which may be determined by a range of other non-medical factors concerning the equipment they are using or the physical environment in which they work.

Some unions say the proposals should focus on making the system more flexible for people to return to work gradually without losing all their benefits and they have called for improvements in rehabilitation services and more investment in preventing people becoming ill in the first place.

The Confederation of British Industry says the current sick note system is "outdated, inflexible and in need of an overhaul".

Australian workers however who fancy a 'sickie' may soon be able to ask their pharmacist.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has issued guidelines on the matter and chemists are expected to start writing medical certificates within the next month or two; most of the medical certificates will be for colds and flu, and for a limited time off work.

The move is expected to reduce the load on doctors as one in 60 visits to GPs are for medical certificates.

Pharmacists will be able to charge patients for the service.

An Australian Bureau of Statistics (APS) survey in 2003 found that for a given two-week period, 9.5 per cent of public sector workers were off sick or injured from work, compared with 6.1 per cent of private sector workers.

At that time absenteeism across the APS cost taxpayers $295 million a year in salaries and up to three times that amount in total expenses.