A plan to reform the sicknotes used by GPs in England to sign off patients as unfit for work was unveiled yesterday by Alan Johnson, the health secretary. He said the sickness certificate - unchanged for 60 years - gave GPs no opportunity to tell employers how to help staff get back to work and improve their fitness. Ministers think thousands of people with back pain or mental health problems are being inadvertently put on a path to long-term illness. After months off sick, they may become permanently unemployed and dependent on incapacity benefit. This could be "a one-way street that starts in the GP's surgery and stops at the dead end of a lifetime on benefits," Johnson told the British Heart Foundation.
Additional Stories
Minister's cure for 'sicknote culture' - The Guardian 21st February 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
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