– A patient with a spine disease was carrying a wardrobe up the stairs with his brother-in-law. It also happened, for example, that a woman went as a babysitter on her child’s class trip. During the inspection, for example, a carpenter with a broken arm was found, who, however, was planing the railings. He said it was the best form of rehabilitation – says Paweł Żebrowski, ZUS spokesman, in an interview with Business Insider about sick leave checks.
Before the pandemic, he conducted an annual average of 550,000. control. Due to COVID, this number has decreased significantly, but it is slowly starting to grow. In 2021, there were 353,000 inspections, and last year 430 thousand. (21.7 percent more than the year before). ZUS estimates that in 2023 it will again be over 500,000.
The number of sick leave is increasing
Although the number of inspections has decreased due to the pandemic, the situation with sick leave is quite different. In 2022, 27 million sick leaves were issued for a total of 288.8 million days. Compared to 2021, these numbers increased by 6.5 million (31.7%) and 48.9 million (20.4%), respectively.
In turn, the amount of withheld benefits in 2022 amounted to PLN 22 million and increased by as much as 46 percent. (PLN 6.9 million) compared to the previous year. The number of suspension decisions which contributed to this amounted to 23.8 thousand.
The most common reason for absences were diseases of the osteoarticular, muscular and connective tissue systems. They accounted for 16.4 percent. of all absences and accounted for 39.1 million days of sickness absence. The next positions were taken by pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium, respiratory diseases as well as injuries, poisoning and other effects of external factors, as well as mental and behavioral disorders – pointed out prof. Gertruda Uścińska, president of ZUS.
Who does ZUS control?
ZUS is not able to check all patients not only because their number is huge, but also because there is a shortage of certifying doctors. Łukasz Kozłowski, member of the Supervisory Board of ZUS, explains that when selecting controls, it is good to use the available tools and be guided by risk analysis.
The electronic sick leave facilitated the work not only of doctors and patients, but also of controllers. Thanks to this, ZUS can check how many exemptions have been issued and for what reason.
Inspections are primarily subject to persons who often take successive short-term sick leaves from different doctors or long-term leaves, as well as people who once had to return the benefit because they used it incorrectly
– points out Pawel Zebrowski.
However, I want to emphasize that basically everyone can be checked, because ZUS selects people for control at random
– added the spokesman of the Social Insurance Institution.
Source: Gazeta
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