Corrections on sick leave. How to correct sick leave

Errors on sick leave: acceptable or not?

Paper will endure anything - this is not about drawing up official documents. Any reporting document requires strictly defined completion. The same applies to a certificate of temporary incapacity for work, or, more simply put, sick leave. Any corrections or blots may make it invalid, as a result of which FSS employees will refuse to pay the corresponding benefit.

Important! If the temporary disability certificate is filled out incorrectly, not only the employee, but also the employer may suffer: the law provides for administrative liability for him.

It should be remembered that in the registration of sick leave there are errors that are considered minor and, on the contrary, those that are serious violations.

What errors are allowed on a sick leave certificate?

Two categories of people can fill out a sick leave certificate in a way that is not required: the doctor, who fills out the top part, and the employer, who is responsible for filling out the other part of the document. Lawyers and FSS officials have provided their own options for correcting shortcomings for each of these categories.

People are not robots. Apparently, out of understanding of this fact, the social insurance fund has developed a list of inaccuracies that are quite acceptable in certificates of incapacity for work. In particular, FSS specialists will not find fault if:

there are no dashes in empty cells;
there are extra spaces between the doctor’s initials;
symbols touch cell boundaries;
some parts of words are written in cursive;
the address of the hospital or clinic is indicated without a clear sequence;
the seal fell on the information margins;
there are quotation marks in the employer's name;
small blots, like extra periods, commas or checkmarks.

Any other errors are more serious and serve as grounds for refusal of acceptance by FSS specialists and require the issuance of an appropriate duplicate.

Attention! If the sick leave sheet was folded several times or filled out with a blue ballpoint pen instead of a black gel pen, this cannot be a reason for its rejection.

Please note: the admission of two or more insignificant errors or omissions in a hospital bulletin entails its recognition as invalid . Therefore, when filling out this document you should be extremely careful.

General information

For a sick person, it is necessary to obtain a certificate of temporary incapacity for work if the citizen wants to be able to receive treatment at home or in a hospital, as well as receive payments for the time he is absent from work.
Sick leave is issued by a special medical institution that has a license to practice medicine. The person himself does not have to fill out anything, because this is done by the doctor, as well as by the management of the company where the patient is employed. Only printed capital letters and numbers should be used; cursive letters are not permitted. You must write with a black gel pen, because ballpoint pens are prohibited for use. Other colors are also not acceptable for filling out the disability certificate. You should not go beyond the boundaries of the squares reserved for letters.

Indicating the organization on the sick leave certificate will definitely be required, but if the patient is not sure of its correctness, then it will be better to leave this column empty. It will then be filled out in the company’s HR department, where they know exactly how to spell the name correctly. But if the personnel officer made a mistake, then it will need to be corrected. This is necessary to avoid problems with the Social Insurance Fund.

The employee should not independently make adjustments, cross out or cover up anything. An authorized person must do something like this so that everything is legal. Otherwise, unauthorized corrections will lead to the document being considered invalid.

The most common mistakes in sick leave

As practice shows, there are a number of errors that are especially common when filling out temporary disability forms. These include:

unclear seal of the organization;
incorrect name of the organization;
the name of the organization and the seal do not match;
the specialization of the attending physician is not indicated;
the use of Roman numerals rather than Arabic numerals;
lack of signature of a doctor or representatives of the medical commission;
the sheet contains unnecessary information;
The disease code or date of sick leave was entered incorrectly.

All these and some other errors are, as they say, critical and invariably lead to the issuance of a duplicate.

Important! There is no need to look for a detailed diagnosis in the sick leave certificate - it is not there. Instead, the bulletin contains a specific code, for example: 01 – disease, 02 – injury, etc. Likewise, in some cases, medical organizations have the right not to indicate their profile (in particular, drug treatment centers for the prevention and control of AIDS, psychiatric hospitals, etc.)

For your information! To clarify the significance of the mistake made, you can contact the regional Social Insurance Fund. This will allow you to promptly resolve problems related to inaccurate completion of the temporary disability certificate and avoid possible legal proceedings.

Correcting errors on sick leave: rules and requirements

If any mistake is made in filling out the sick leave form, there is a strictly defined procedure for correcting it.

The first thing you need to do is use a black gel pen to carefully cross out the corrected entry with a straight, continuous line. Important! If an entire line is written incorrectly, then on the reverse side you need to write that this line is invalid;
Next, you should enter the correct information in the specially designated fields on the back of the sheet;
“Believe the Corrected One”—this resolution must accompany every corrected entry. It must be supported by the signature of the responsible employee and the seal of the organization.

The person responsible for corrections may be:

general director or director of the enterprise;
Chief Accountant;
HR specialist;
any other authorized person whose responsibility is to issue sick leave certificates.

If a sick leave certificate is issued to an employee who works for an individual entrepreneur, then a stamp can be affixed only if it is available. If the individual entrepreneur does not have a seal, which is quite permissible by law, then no additional notes need to be made.

Is it possible to correct blots or errors on a sick leave certificate using a proofreader?

In no case. Clause 65 of Order No. 624n directly objects to this. Such sick leave may not be accepted as a basis for writing off expenses by auditors from the Social Insurance Fund. To avoid having to prove its validity in court, it is better to directly adhere to the established procedure for making corrections.

Is it possible to fix the fix?

It happens that when correcting his own mistake, an employee of the HR or accounting department writes the correct version not where required by law - on the back of the sheet, but next to the error. Such a correction will not be counted; it is also a violation. If this happens, the wrong “fix” needs to be corrected. On the reverse side of the sheet you should write what was supposed to be, accompanied by a note: “Believe the corrected one,” signature and seal.

ATTENTION! If the incorrect format of the correction does not obscure the information field too much and does not interfere with the reading of all necessary records, the FSS may consider this a technical defect and not be too picky. But "fix the fix" would be more reliable.

For your information: in recent years there has been a tendency to relax the requirements of the Social Insurance Fund for issuing sick leave. Minor defects are not a prerequisite for its redesign; the main thing is that the text is readable and understandable.

Basic rules for filling out sick leave

Standardized sick leave form. Filled out by the hospital, as well as the company where the worker works. The requirements for entries in the existing columns and cells are as follows:

letters must be placed strictly in the middle of the cells. It is prohibited to cross the boundaries of cells or touch their edges;
words should be entered on the computer or in writing (capital letters are used);
Filling in manually is done with black ink;
The employer is prohibited from editing the data entered by the doctor. An error is detected, then you will have to issue a duplicate;
a copy of the document, issued again, is issued on the same form, but with an o;
To correct a typo made by the employer, you must carefully cross out the error with a straight line, write down the correct information on the reverse side, and certify this entry with the official’s signature and the company’s seal.

Remember, an incorrectly executed document means the FSS refuses to pay for it with all the ensuing consequences. Even if you were really sick throughout this period.

Errors in registration of sick leave by medical personnel

Sometimes mistakes in filling out sick leave sheets are made by employees of hospitals, clinics and medical centers. In this case, neither employers nor other employees of medical institutions have the right to correct them. Only specialists from the Social Insurance Fund can determine the severity of the error. If they consider this violation to be significant, they will return the document to the organization. After this, the employee who owns the certificate of incapacity for work can contact doctors to issue a duplicate.

Important! A duplicate is the only way to correct a mistake that a doctor made when filling out a sick leave certificate. The previous copy of the document must be cancelled.

It is important that a duplicate is requested and issued in a timely manner. In the event of disputes, judges or auditors may be confused by the long period between the initial issuance of sick leave and its replacement.

Attention! Before starting to enter the necessary information into the employee’s sick leave certificate, the employer must make sure that the notes made by the attending physician are correct.

Features of checking the validity of fields and correct filling

There are two programs required for registration of electronic health insurance and distributed by the Social Insurance Fund free of charge - for a medical organization and for the policyholder. Both can be downloaded from the website https://cabinets.fss.ru/eln.html.

In the “Policyholder's Account” there is a tab “To be filled out by the employer.” The head of the organization can make changes - add or remove information - only in this window; The “Certificate of Incapacity for Work” and “Medical Organization” windows are for informational purposes only .

The program has pre-established interaction with the FSS information base. This means that when medical organizations fill out an electronic sick leave form, the entered data is checked automatically.

If the patient’s SNILS or any other information received from government agencies and directly related to the employee was entered incorrectly, the system will not allow sending an electronic sick leave to the Social Insurance Fund. Instead, the “Data entered incorrectly” window will appear, meaning that there is a discrepancy in the data between the completed form and the FSS information base.

The same applies to errors on the part of the employer: in order to successfully register and pay for EIT, according to Federal Law No. 86-FZ dated May 1, 2022, all insuring organizations must be registered with the Social Insurance Fund. Accordingly, the data entered during initial registration automatically ends up in the electronic register - this data does not need to be changed, corrected, or supplemented.

The only place where a real mistake can be made is when calculating the final amount of benefits, since this responsibility falls entirely on the shoulders of the heads of organizations. The system cannot automatically calculate the amount of the benefit, but it can help - on the official website of the Fund there is a calculator with which you can almost instantly find out how much you need to pay to the state as personal income tax, and how much as a benefit to a sick employee.

Therefore, before sending an electronic sick leave, the organization’s accountant needs to recalculate the amount of the benefit so that no mistakes are made.

Errors in the preparation of sick leave made by the employer

Since there is a part in hospital forms filled out by representatives of medical institutions, and a part filled out by employers, it is not surprising that there are also mistakes that are made by the latter.

Most often, these are inaccurately entered data that prevents them from being read by a machine. That is why the following rules should be strictly adhered to.

Write block letters exclusively within the boundaries of cells;
Start writing only from the leftmost cell and leave one empty cell between words;
In cases where the entry is very long, it can be shortened, but only in such a way that the meaning of what is written is not lost.

If there is an error in calculating benefits, this may serve as a basis for refusing to accept a sick leave certificate from the Social Insurance Fund, about which representatives of the fund will make an appropriate decision.

As a result of all of the above, we can conclude that careful adherence to the rules and regulations for filling out sick leave forms can prevent the occurrence of such unpleasant consequences as refusal to pay compensation for the time spent on sick leave to an employee and the imposition of an administrative penalty on the employer. That is why at all stages of filling out hospital forms, responsible persons should be especially scrupulous and attentive.