Rehabilitation of sick employees

Problem analysis and advice

The occupational health and safety service or company doctor will draw up a problem analysis and advice on an action plan within 6 weeks of your employee’s first day of illness. The employee will receive a copy of this.

You will also receive a copy. This does not contain any medical data that you are not allowed to process, such as the nature and cause of the illness. However, you may receive information about the employee’s functional limitations and capabilities and what these mean for the type of work the employee can still do.

Action plan

Based on the advice about rehabilitation from the occupational health and safety service or company doctor, you must draw up an action plan. You agree on this with your employee. You send a copy of the action plan to your employee, the occupational health and safety service or company doctor and the case manager. The case manager can be an independent service provider, an employee of the occupational health and safety service or a rehabilitation firm.

Rehabilitation file

The advice from the occupational health and safety service or company doctor and the action plan will be included in your employee’s rehabilitation file. In addition, this file contains:

• information about what has been done to get your employee back to work;
• advice and reports from other parties involved in the rehabilitation process, such as the case manager and the rehabilitation firm, if you have engaged these;
• all relevant correspondence between you and the occupational health and safety service or company doctor.

Retention rehabilitation file

There is no statutory retention period for reintegration files. In principle, it is reasonable not to retain the file for longer than two years after the employee has left the company.

Note: Are you a self-insurer under the Sickness Benefits Act? Then you must keep the data for the UWV for five years (Article 3, paragraph 2, Regulation on the Tasks, Administrative Regulations and Costs of Self-Insurance under the Sickness Benefits Act).

Rehabilitation firm

You can choose to engage a rehabilitation firm. The occupational health and safety service or company doctor and you only transfer the necessary information about your employee to the rehabilitation firm. You do first have to inform the employee what this information is, as well as the occupational health and safety service or company doctor.

The occupational health and safety service or company doctor can also transfer medical data to the rehabilitation firm if this is necessary for the rehabilitation process.

The rehabilitation firm, in turn, may only transfer data that fall under medical confidentiality to you and the occupational health and safety service or company doctor with the explicit consent of your employee. The rehabilitation firm can transfer the other data without your employee’s consent.

Retention of data at rehabilitation firm

The following retention periods apply for data about your sick employee at the rehabilitation firm:

• 20 years for medical data;
• two years for other (non-medical) data.

Rehabilitation report

After 89 weeks from the first day of illness, you draw up a rehabilitation report together with your employee. You do this on the basis of the rehabilitation file. To ensure that no medical data come into your possession, the occupational health and safety service or company doctor draws up the medical part.

Your employee then sends the rehabilitation report to the UWV, including the medical part prepared by the occupational health and safety service or company doctor.