The initiative seeks to reinforce control over false licenses, strengthening the supervisory bodies and establishing sanctions to reduce their impact on the labor environment.
On May 24, 2025, the Executive enacted Law No. 21.746, which, in the midst of the controversy over the more than 25 thousand civil servants who have left the country while on medical leave, introduces a series of amendments to the law on the granting and use of medical leave.
The purpose of the initiative is to strengthen the powers of the regulatory and supervisory bodies, as well as to establish the administrative and criminal sanctions indicated in the aforementioned law.
Unfortunately, the problem related to the crisis caused by the issuance of medical licenses, which are not consistent with a health situation that produces temporary incapacity to work, has caused havoc not only in the public sector, but also in the various industries of the private sector.
This aspect is relevant, since the non-attendance of the worker at work without a justified cause for two consecutive days, two Mondays in a month or a total of three days during the same period of time, a cause for dismissal expressly contemplated by the Labor Code, many times medical leave is presented as the usual resource to try to justify such absences.
According to different estimates, there would be up to a total of 200,000 fraudulent leaves of absence per year if we also pay attention to the private sector, therefore: How do the modifications established by the new law affect labor relations within the company?
While it is true that the bulk of the enacted regulation focuses on the control of doctors who issue medical licenses, as well as the different agencies involved in the process, labor relations governed by the Labor Code are inevitably involved in different aspects, in particular, from the point of view of the validity of a medical license regarding which there may be doubts about its origin.
Specifically, the following provisions draw attention:
1. The COMPIN, an institution that on many occasions rejects medical licenses for unjustified rest, by virtue of the new Article 2° introduced by Law No. 21.746, may request complementary reports or additional background information on the diagnosis on which the rest order is based.
In this same line, the presence of the professional may even be required to attend a hearing to clarify aspects regarding the granting of the medical leave or leaves of absence, which could be decisive in labor matters, given the amount of background on which the COMPIN’s decision would be based.
2. In addition, a robust investigation procedure is established in Article 5 of the aforementioned law, according to which the Superintendence of Social Security, ex officio or at the request of a party – be it COMPIN, FONASA, ISP or any individual – will initiate an investigation procedure in the event that a professional authorized to grant medical leave issues one or more leaves of absence with no medical basis or with the absence of a pathology that produces temporary incapacity to work.
This procedure is of interest to the employer not only from the perspective of the initiation of the procedure, but also, in the event that the issuance of one or more leaves of absence without medical grounds is proven in such procedure, the employers must be notified with respect to the beneficiaries involved.
This is consistent with the amendment introduced by this same law to article 220 of the Penal Code (which originally regulates the penalties for the physician who issues false certification), including an offense whose perpetrator may be a worker who makes use of the false medical leave to justify one or more absences. Specifically, the new final paragraph of article 202 of the Penal Code establishes that the following penalties shall be imposed: ”Whoever maliciously uses false documents, regardless of the manner in which they were obtained”.
3. Finally, it establishes the maintenance of a website with an anonymous reporting system for the misuse of medical licenses and a public registry of the sanctions applied according to the investigation procedure previously discussed.
This platform will include a record of the average number of medical licenses issued by each individual provider, broken down by day, month, year and specialty. This information and registry, both in terms of sanctions, suspensions and average license issuance, will be governed by principles of publicity and visibility, which should facilitate the consultation of such sources by interested third parties, such as employers.
Accordingly, and notwithstanding the fact that it remains to be seen how these powers, procedures and records will materialize, we are facing a good possibility of establishing greater control in relation to the use of false licenses, and thus reasonably curb the considerable impact it has had both on the public sector and the quality of service, as well as on the private sector and the productivity of the different industries.
For more information on these issues, please contact our Labor Group:
Jorge Arredondo | Partner | jarredondo@az.cl
Jocelyn Aros | Director Labor Group | jaros@az.cl
Felipe Neira | Senior Associate | fneira@az.cl
Palmira Valdivia | Associate | pvaldivia@az.cl
Manuel Sepúlveda | Associate | msepulveda@az.cl
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