Doctors notes and increased medical costs

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/06/2025 (424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You may recall some point in your past — for some, a more recent past than others — of having to produce a document to prove to a schoolteacher that you were, in fact, not feeling well and did, in fact, have to be excused for the day. Signed, Mom.

That seemed normal enough at the time. The question is, why is it so commonplace for employees to still have to do it, well into adulthood?

It’s a question health-care practitioners in Canada have been asking more often. Doctors Manitoba on Tuesday called for the provincial government to eliminate employer requirements for sick notes to excuse a worker’s short-term absence from the job. This call comes after a similar one by the Canadian Medical Association, which made the entreaty to governments in October last year.

The reasoning for the two groups’ request is the same: getting rid of the need for workers to obtain a doctor’s note acknowledging an illness and the need to be away from work is a drain on health-care resources. It takes up a physician’s already precious time with paperwork which has nothing to do with caring for a patient, and everything to do with ticking off a box on somebody else’s list.

Doctors Manitoba estimates getting rid of these requirements will free up time for hundreds of thousands of other patient visits and save tax- payers about $8 million per year.

Those are all great reasons to consider doing away with the requirement, but there are other, more simple ones.

The doctors clearly don’t want to deal with writing sick notes. It’s also questionable how useful getting such a note is for an employer: even if an employee sees a physician, gets a note, and provides it, they have already missed at least some work by that point, and arrangements will already have been made to compensate for the absence.

As for the workers, it seems infantilizing to make working adults have to prove the severity of their own illness. Yes, it’s possible someone isn’t as sick as they claim and simply wants to take the day. But the worker — under the terms of workplace legislation, specific workplace standards or the terms of a bargaining agreement — is already generally afforded a set number of sick days per year. It should not be the employer’s right to force a worker to justify the use of them.

We have also learned a few things in recent years, and decades, which should change how we approach illness in the workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call in terms of how we treat illness in public. Specifically we learned it’s better to be safe than sorry — if you wake up with a scratchy throat and a cough, just stay home and make sure you’re well before returning to work. No more powering through because you’re “not that bad.”

And beyond dealing with the infectious, is dealing with the invisible. A worker struggling with their mental health should be able to take some time off to look after themselves without having to produce a note proving they are in the throes of depression or some other ailment. At the same time, managers still have to be able to manage their businesses and set policies for sick leave.

The Manitoba NDP had put forward a private member’s bill to eliminate sick note requirements for short-term illnesses in 2016, only for it to be struck down by the then-ruling PC government. Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara has said the province is still interested in such legislation.

Let’s hope we can all do away with an irritation, but still find a solution that works for employers and employees.