Electronic certificate of incapacity for work (eAU) - obligations, procedure, alternatives

What are the duties and rights of employers and employees?

Obligation of the employees to notify

Your employees are obliged to inform you of their incapacity to work and its expected duration "without delay". This obligation has not changed - but it is becoming more important, as you will learn later in the article.

Obligation of the employees to provide evidence

This obligation has been eliminated since the introduction of the eAU - your employees no longer have the obligation to provide you with a paper AU.

Obligation of the employees to make a statement

The employee's obligation to provide evidence is reduced to a duty to establish: from the fourth day, they must have their incapacity for work established by a doctor. Incidentally, you can demand that they go to the doctor earlier.

What do I need to do to retrieve eAU?

1. To retrieve the eAU, you or your tax office must communicate with the health insurance companies. This is done via secure and encrypted channels using appropriately tested payroll or time recording software.
2. Inform your employees about the new rules - ideally centrally and with just a few clicks via Read & Sign from Sawayo.
3. New employment contracts should refer to the obligations of employees with statutory insurance and also consider what happens when switching from or to private insurance, as well as in the event of an incident. Be sure to seek advice from your attorneys in this regard.

When can I retrieve eAU - and when not?

The famous eAU is not always available to you as an employer. The prerequisites for retrieval are that your employees have reported their incapacity for work to you and that an employment relationship exists or existed for the corresponding period.

In the following cases you can retrieve the eAU

• Incapacity for work certified by contract physician or dentist
• Inability to work due to an accident at work
• Inpatient hospitalization

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In the following cases you cannot retrieve the eAU

• Private physicians
• Doctors abroad
• Rehab services
• Privately insured employees
• Employment bans
• Illness of the child
• Gradual reintegration

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Who checks that I have been notified of the inability to work by my employees?

The health insurance company cannot know whether you have been notified of incapacity for work by your employee or whether you call up the eAU on suspicion. However, the new process aims to prevent the latter.

Therefore, you are on the safe side if you can prove that your employee has also notified you independently. With a digital solution like Sawayo, there's no doubt about it.

Retrieval of the eAU - the standard process

1. Employees report their incapacity for work and the expected duration to you. The most efficient way to do this is via a digital solution such as Sawayo.
2. The doctor's office or hospital will report the inability to work to the health insurance company by midnight.
3. You or your tax advisor send a request for the eAU to the GKV's central communication server starting the following day.
4. The health insurance company provides the eAU on the communication server and you or your tax advisor receive a notification about it.
5. You or your tax advisor retrieve the eAU from the health insurance company's communication server. You will receive the following information: Name, start and expected end of the AU, date of the medical determination of the AU, whether it is an initial or subsequent notification, further information if it is an occupational accident.

The Confederation of German Employers' Associations has published this flyer about the process in detail. You can also find frequently asked questions and answers about the eAU here.

Retrieval of the eAU in the event of technical faults

If there is a technical malfunction in the doctor's office or hospital so that the eAU cannot be transmitted digitally to the health insurance company, the eAU is transmitted by mail and scanned at the health insurance company. Of course, this causes a corresponding delay. If you receive an error message when retrieving the eAU from the health insurance company's communication server, it is probably because the eAU has not yet been received.

However, this route is only taken if it is not yet known at the time of the doctor's visit that there is a technical fault. If it is already known, the doctor's office issues the old familiar AU in triplicate on paper. Your employees are then obliged to give you the printout intended for you.

Continued payment of remuneration in the event of pre-existing conditions

According to the Continuation of Remuneration Act (Entgeltfortzahlungsgesetz - EntgFG), you must pay remuneration for employees who are unable to work for six weeks. Previous illnesses in the last six months that are based on the same causes are taken into account. In order to find out whether two or more eAUs are causally related, you can make a prior illness inquiry with the health insurance fund.

You may only do this if:

1. a current AU is available,
2. there has been at least one other AU in the last 6 months and
3. the duration of all incapacities to work in the last 12 months together is at least 30 days.

By the way, this does not work for mini-jobbers because the health insurance companies do not have any employment periods and is also not allowed for privately insured persons.

Good to know

The devil is sometimes in the details, so keep the following things in mind when implementing them in your daily life:

• You can only query the same period of incapacity for work once within 14 days. However, it can happen that the report has not yet been received by the health insurance company if you query too early. Therefore, ironically, it is advisable not to start the query immediately after being notified of the inability to work by an employee, but to wait at least until the fifth day.
• With the eAU, you will no longer know which doctor in which specialty issued the eAU. It has not yet been clarified whether you have a right to information in the event of a dispute and whether you can continue to request an expert opinion from the medical service of the health insurance funds. These questions will have to be clarified by the courts.
• You also request the eAU from the health insurance funds for mini-jobbers. However, you must ask which health insurance fund they are insured with.