The Electronic Sick Note

What is the electronic sick note?

The electronic certificate of incapacity for work, eAU for short, replaces the paper route between practice, health insurer and employer for people with statutory insurance. The practice transmits the finding digitally to your health insurer and your employer retrieves the data there. Since January 2023 this retrieval procedure has been binding for employers.

For you that means you no longer have to submit the certificate yourself. You still receive a printout for your own records, and you should keep it: it is your evidence if the transmission goes wrong.

Do you still have to report sick?

Yes, absolutely. Only the duty to present the certificate has gone, not the duty to notify. You still have to tell your employer without delay that you are unable to work and how long it is likely to last.

This is the most common misunderstanding around the eAU, and it can be expensive: anyone who relies on „the insurer will report it" and does not call breaches a contractual duty, regardless of whether the data is correctly held by the insurer.

Who is not covered by the eAU?

The retrieval procedure is reserved for the statutory panel-doctor system and applies only to people with statutory insurance. Left out are therefore: privately insured people, certificates from private doctors, people in marginal employment in private households, and certificates from abroad.

In those cases you receive the certificate as a document, as before, and submit it yourself. That is not a defect and does not make the certificate worth less: section 5 (1) of the Continued Remuneration Act requires the proof, not a particular means of transmission.

What if the eAU does not reach your employer?

It happens, and the reasons almost never lie with you: the data only becomes available with a delay, the insurer allocation is wrong, or the employer simply does not retrieve it. In that case present your printout: that is exactly what you get it for.

Legally you are on the safe side as soon as you have had the incapacity for work established in time and have informed your employer. You are not responsible for faults in the retrieval procedure between insurer and employer.

And if the certificate comes from a private doctor?

Then there is no eAU, and that is normal. Private doctors are not connected to the retrieval procedure, because it is part of the statutory panel-doctor system. You receive the certificate as a document and submit it to your employer yourself, just as everyone did until 2022.

That applies even if you have statutory insurance. Your employer has to accept a private certificate as proof; they will simply not be able to retrieve anything and will want to be told so.

For the evidential value something else matters anyway: that it is clear which doctor established the incapacity for work and when, and that contact with a doctor actually took place.

Can a private doctor sign off someone with statutory insurance? The detailed answer →

Can you get a certificate by video consultation too?

Yes. The doctor sees you and asks questions in the video consultation. The Arbeitsgericht Erfurt gave a private certificate issued this way full evidential value (judgment of 19 July 2023, case no. 4 Ca 32/23).

With us, a doctor licensed in Germany holds this consultation, daily from 9 am to 10 pm. If incapacity for work is medically justifiable, you receive the certificate as a PDF; the doctor sets the duration individually, and a backdated start is possible. The consultation usually costs €49.99 and is billed under the German scale of fees for doctors.