Hi! If you're new here, you might want to register for free email updates. Just use the form at the top of the sidebar. Thanks for visiting The Payroll Blog!

In October 2007, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published a report detailing changes to SSP rules that had been recommended by an SSP Review Working Group. A number of the recommendations were introduced in October 2008, with the effect that employers are not required to pass SSP-related information to the next employer, and entitlement to SSP in a new job does have to take absences in the previous employment into consideration.

Another of the recommendations is the subject of a new consultation document published by the DWP. The “sick note” issued by doctors (known as the “Doctor’s Statement” in legislation) is to be redesigned so that the emphasis of the information provided by doctors for employers changes to what is being called a “fit note”. The new form’s proper name will be “Statement of fitness for work”. Doctors will be able to indicate, not simply whether a person is or is not fit for work, but also whether the person “may be fit for some work now”, in which case the doctor can also indicate the person, with the employer’s agreement, may benefit from a phased return to work, or altered hours, or amended duties, or workplace adaptations.

There are currently three Doctor’s Statements defined in legislation, namely

• form Med 3, issued by doctors for social security and SSP purposes on the same day as, or on the day following, the examination of the patient
• form Med 4, issued under Incapacity Benefit arrangements and now obsolete
• form Med 5, the “backdating certificate”, issued when a doctor cannot issue a Med 3 because it relates to an earlier medical examination.

The intention is to replace all three of these statutory forms with a single, new Med 3, which can be issued on the day of the examination, or in respect of an earlier examination, or based on another doctor’s report. The forms will be made available in paper form but, following a pilot study involving doctors’ surgeries in Wales, the Government has decided to move from a paper-based medical statement to a computer generated format which can be printed in the doctor’s surgery and saved to the patient’s records.

The new form, as included in the draft Regulations, will be set out as follows:

The consultation document is available at the link below and comments from interested parties may be sent to the DWP up to 19 August 2009.

Further information:
Reforming the Medical Statement

---

The UK Payroll News is sponsored by HRD & Payroll Solutions

Written by Ian Congreave -

Filed under: Sick Pay on June 8th, 2009

Related posts you may enjoy:

Statutory Sick Pay - Changes to form SSP1

Statutory Sick Pay - New SSP1 form comes into use

European Court sick pay ruling ‘divorced from real world’ and could force employers to implement less generous Statutory Sick Pay schemes, says CIPD