In the first quarter of 2023, Romanians took the hospital equivalent of 23,000 years, or 8.41 million days, according to data sent to CNAS upon request by HotNews.ro.

A total of 1.83 million leave leaves were issued, which would mean an average of 4.5 days.

These days are numbered by CNAS. It should be borne in mind that according to the law, the first 5 days of leave are borne by the employer, and the following – by CNAS.

“Therefore, the number of days of sick leave paid by FNUASS (paid by health insurance companies) differs from the total number of days in sick leave sheets,” the institution says.

According to the cited source, the determination of the number of beneficiaries of medical leave cannot be carried out by CNAS, considering, on the one hand, that only medical leave longer than five days is included in the settlement procedure with health insurance companies, and on the other hand, on the other hand, that a person can use several medical sheets per quarter.

124,840 years of sick leave fell in 2021

If we look at the data for 2021 and 2022, they show that Romanians took medical leave (according to CNAS) equivalent to 124,840 years, respectively 109,688 years. Let’s not forget that 2021 was a pandemic year.

So, the data is as follows:

• 2021: 8,405,230 certificates of medical leave, 45,566,833 days of receiving assistance from FNUASS;

• 2022: 8,364,871 sick leaves, 40,029,055 days of assistance received from the National Health Service

So, in 2021 we are talking about an average of 5.4 days, and in 2022 – about 4.7 days.

The Minister of Health complains that we have a large number of sick people

The other day, the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, complained that we have a lot of medical leave, saying that “there are concerns” about “keeping this phenomenon” of medical leave under control, because “we are talking about a lot of public money that is being paid.”

According to him, there are also fake documents, “any such activity leads to the emergence of situations when legality is not observed.”

“I will tell you what the evolution of sick leave was: during the pandemic, it increased quite a lot, and this was normal, because sick leave was given not only to a sick person, but also to parents who have a sick child. There were some provisions that led to increase the number of sick days. This phenomenon ceased in 2022; in 2022, the number of sick days has decreased by 12% compared to the year before, and we are close to the pre-pandemic level, as well as the number of sick days,” said Rafila on Prima TV.

According to him, the number of sick people in general is high, and there are several explanations for this.

“One concerns doctors who issue sick leave. Most are prescribed to people who need a vacation to restore health. “I think that the mechanism that is stricter against certain people who regularly write out a very large number of sick days, I think that the control mechanism and the National Chamber of Health Insurance has the right to do such a thing,” he said.

• “There are various financial options that discourage the desire to claim sick leave. In France, for example, the first day of sick leave is not paid. (…) It is clear that we have to keep this phenomenon under control, because we are talking about large public money that is being paid. This does not mean that we should go to the other extreme, in any way prohibit the granting of medical leave to people who really need it,” Alexandru Rafila said on Prima TV’s Insider Politic show.

He emphasized that at the level of the Ministry of Health, as well as at the level of the National Health Service, “there are concerns” about “keeping this phenomenon under control” of sick leave.

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