Incoming squeeze for the imaginary sick among civil servants. From 2017 September XNUMX, the single pole for tax visits managed by INPS will be launched, which will be able to arrange medical checks for workers absent due to illness both in the private and public sectors, until now under the control of the local health authorities. It can do so at the request of the employers and as a matter of course, even sending more than one visit a day. Only the armed forces, police and firefighters will remain outside the perimeter of action.
Inps intends - explained the president, Tito Boeri - thanks to the single pole the percentage of tax visits to employees of the Public Administration should reach much higher than that of checks intended for private employees, which today is equal to 5% of the certificates presented. If we consider the number of certificates in the public sector - about 6 million in 2015 for less than 3 million workers - 5% would mean at least 300 checks. To date, in the private sector the average is 5 days of absence a year, while in the public sector it reaches 11.
“We expect the single pole to act as a deterrent, reducing the differences between regions in the number of certificates per public employee, which today are very marked, unlike what happens in the private sector – added Boeri, presenting today in Rome the new function of the Institute – Repressing opportunist behavior is important, but it is not the only objective. The single pole will also benefit civil servants, as it will allow them to collect information about their health. In this way we will be able to learn a lot about risk factors for employees and intervene in time, preventing diseases from becoming chronic or even turning into forms of disability”.
Furthermore, the choice of where to send the doctors will not be accidental. It will be addressed by software capable of processing millions of data on a statistical basis and selecting the most suspicious cases.
News coming also for doctors. Every day, in the early hours of the morning, the Savio computer application will assign home visits to the various tax doctors, rationalizing travel to reduce costs.
“The single pole will also guarantee much more transparency – Boeri said again – The disease certificates, as already happens, will be available online both by the worker and by the employer (the latter with obscuring of the diagnosis, ed). But that's not all: from January 2018 we will produce an observatory which, on a quarterly basis, will provide information on sick leave in both the public and private sectors”, with data classification by region, gender and age group.
Finally, to make the Institute's work easier, the INPS president called for a harmonization of the hours of availability between the public (10-12 and 17-19) and private (9-13 and 15-18).
As for the funds allocated, it will start with 17 million euros and, when fully operational, 50 million euros a year will be allocated to control activities.
