AND
the debate on the possibility for workers to self-certify the first three days of illness without going to the doctor has landed in the Senate, and in the plenary hall. Eleven senators who left the 5-star Movement and are now in the Mixed Group also ask that, on a case-by-case basis, the Order of Doctors judges the disciplinary consequences for members accused of having made false certifications of illness, punished by the Brunetta laws with imprisonment from 1 to 5 years, a fine of up to 1600 euros but above all with dismissal (and the "disincentivity" of family doctors) and disbarment from the register.
The day before yesterday Maurizio Romani, Alessandra Bencini, Luis Orellana, Marino Mastrangeli and other senators elected in 2013 with the movement of Beppe Grillo, presented a motion in which they ask the Government to leave workers the possibility of certifying short absences themselves "to simplify the legislation in force on the methods of certifying temporary incapacity for work that cannot be directly verified and documented by the doctor".
The second request is to amend article 55 quinquies of the legislative decree 165/2001 which provides for sanctions for doctors who in the certification process have not "directly ascertained and objectively documented" the patient's state of illness. A new legal provision should eliminate the automatism between the final sentence of conviction on the one hand and disbarment from the register, dismissal or forfeiture from the convention on the other, "giving preference to a disciplinary procedure which allows the order or the structure public health authority to graduate the application of the disciplinary sanction taking into due consideration the reference to the specific case".
No comment for now from the Federation of orders which, exactly six years ago in a hearing in the Chamber, had called on the Legislator to take into account the fact that in some cases even having the patient in front of it it is not possible to objectively document some pathologies, for example certain temporarily disabling such as migraine, and therefore could lack the conditions at least for the disciplinary sanction to the doctor. What is certain is that, institutionally, the motion cannot be discussed in the Commission (where the available guidance tools are the resolution and the agenda) and if the vote is positive, it will commit the Government to change the 2001 decree.
