Getting sick as an employee of the University of Not-Bielefeld used to be pretty straightforward. You simply selected your ailment, disease, or injury of choice; found a doctor to put you on sick leave if it all it lasted for three or more workdays; and then handed your sick note in to the head office of your department. (Or get someone to do it for you in case you’re really sick, admin being more important than recuperation after all.) Easy peasy …
Even getting the doctor’s note wasn’t that difficult if you were willing to invest a couple of hours in their waiting room. (Which enough of my students certainly are.) In fact, the doctors seem to like handing out the notes more than they do prescriptions for the illness that’s actually on the note.
Take this example of mine …
More than a few years back, I banged up my pinky on my left hand playing volleyball. Without going into any of the gruesome details, it wasn’t pretty. But it wasn’t life-threatening either: just a bit of “adjusting” and a splint for a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, the doctor immediately and automatically offered to put me on sick leave for two weeks without me even asking about it. Why? Truth be told, I essentially have a desk job that involves a lot of typing and the doctor knew that. Granted, the injury was on my dominant hand, but it merely made my already awkward typing style (index finger and thumb on the left hand, index and ring fingers on the right hand) just that little bit more awkward. Just had to learn to type like the British aristocracy drink tea.
But, having recently been made aware of something called the internet, the health-insurance companies decided to streamline this already relatively efficient process by eliminating the physical doctor’s note as of the start of 2023 and instead having it transmitting electronically directly to the respective employers. Great idea. The problem was that no one cleared this move with central admin at the University of Not-Bielefeld, whose motto is “share the load”. (And that’s load with a capital BS.) It simply can’t be that all a person has to do to be sick is, well, be sick, right?
So, enter a brand new form together with a brand new e-mail address where you have to send this form to with your boss in cc.
Essentially the new form asks for all the information that’s either on the doctor’s note or that central admin could pull up themselves from your personal file. Granted, there are some new, legal bits to it in case of an accident (e.g., how did it happen, whose fault was it, …), but if this new information wasn’t important beforehand, how is it suddenly so relevant now? And, in the case of an accident caused by a third party (like for the latest McDonald’s coffee lawsuit — sigh, ever think that elderly women should stop going to McDonald’s?), I’m pretty sure there’s another, dedicated form for that as well. But, in an unexpected nod to efficiency, this same form can also be used when coming back to work after an extended sick leave (i.e., 3+ days), again information that’s present on the original, electronic doctor’s note.
All in all, classic Admin 101: they’ve made a relatively simple process unnecessarily complicated, thereby creating more work (and presumably a new position for themselves), all while including other people in the “fun”, many of whom don’t care about it. Or understand what all the fun is about.
And you know something? I really don’t care about it.
I really don’t need to see all this official confirmation. That’s what admin is there for. Before, people in my group sent me a message if they were sick and for how long and it worked just fine. Now my inbox is filled up with more useless e-mails distracting me from the much more important ones, like those from all the Nigerian princes who really do need my help and desperately want my attention.
Ironically, the new system is one of those few times where those people insured under statutory (public) health insurance are at the advantage. For some reason, only the public health-insurance companies are doing the streamlining and the private health-insurance companies are sticking with the old printed doctor’s note. (Now, saying “for some reason” makes it sound like some sort of mystery. It isn’t. Instead of sticking with the paper note, they’re really just sticking it to their customers because they can’t be bothered to do the extra work. Same as with the health-insurance cards that they don’t issue but the public companies do. Their official explanation, or at least that of my company, is to keep my rates as low as possible. You know something? I know my rates and I’m pretty sure that I can stomach (or not even notice) the extra, one-time fee of a couple of bucks for them to make me a card, even, if as they say, it only contains my personal details that I can fill out on a form at the doctor’s office anyway. (With a broken pinky. On my writing hand.) This explanation also doesn’t explain why this exact same company does provide cards for their customers on their public health-insurance plan.)
Instead, those of us who are privately insured get our very own box to tick indicating that we are also including our very own scan of the doctor’s note with our e-mail. So nice of admin to help speed our recovery through all the extra work we now have to do for them.
But, at least it all happens electronically, which is a major leap forward for German admin …
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