The Minister of Health announces the change of illness codes, after the decision regarding the non-payment of the first day of medical leave

The Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, announces the change of disease codes, after the decision regarding the non-payment of the first day of sick leave, stating that the application rules are already being worked on and will be made transparent for decision-making.

“I said from the beginning that this is a transitory measure, which can be stopped at any time. And more than that, it will be nuanced. Last week I had an applied and good meeting from this point of view with the representative patient associations and there will be a series of changes that will reduce inequities as much as possible”, said Rogobete, on Sunday evening, on Antena 3, about the dissatisfaction related to the Government's decision by which the first day of sick leave will not be paid, which entered into force today, News.ro cites.

The Minister of Health showed that “we are working on rethinking the disease codes”.

“For example, code 01 means common disease, but imagine that in this common disease code 01, rare diseases also appear, which in fact are not common diseases. And then we agreed together with the team from the Ministry of Health, but also with the suggestions from patient associations, to rethink and reclassify the disease codes. It will not be a work that will take very long, because we are discussing here for 14 or 16 disease codes. With the rethinking and restoration of the disease codes, for the new disease codes and the classification of pathologies, exceptions will certainly be made”, Rogobete pointed out.

“And an idea that I came up with and the patient associations agreed to, would be that for repetitive medical leaves, for the same disease code, I'll give you an example, for an oncology patient who needs radiotherapy, it's obvious that every few days or weeks he still needs that medical leave, for radiotherapy, there's no doubt about it. It's just an example, it's sure that it can be applied to several other pathologies and, on this principle, the norms of application. They are already built to some extent, we will make them transparent for decision-making this week, in order to reduce as much as possible of inequities”, explained the Minister of Health.