Human Resource Services
Medical Certification and Documentation of Sick Leave
At the discretion of the immediate supervisor or other appropriate authority, medical certification of sick leave use may be required under the following circumstances:
- When a TEAMS or USPS employee’s absences are excessive. What is considered excessive is based on departmental policy, but the policy must be applied consistently.
- When a pattern has emerged. An example would be employees who consistently call in sick on the Friday prior to a three-day weekend.
- When an employee has been absent three times in any 30-day period. These absences need not be full days.
Medical documentation submitted to departments for any reason should be considered confidential. This includes any documentation submitted to support the use of sick leave, extended leaves of absence, and applications for use of sick leave pool hours. The safest approach for departments in general, and payroll processors and supervisors in particular, is to treat all medical documentation obtained from employees as if it is protected by both state and federal law.
Departments are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of medical records. To that end, please be sure to use the following procedures to protect medical documentation:
- Maintain confidential medical information, including leave requests for family or medical reasons, and similar information, in separate files marked “confidential.”
- These confidential medical files must be separate and visibly distinct from the working files departments maintain on employees.
- Confidential medical information should not be maintained in supervisors’ files.
While the confidential medical files can be maintained within the same location as a department’s working files, they should be kept separately in a manner that restricts access to only those individuals with an actual "need to know" that information in order to perform their assigned duties in the UF workplace.
For information about records retention of attendance and leave records, please see Records Management's Time and Leave Keeping Records.