INSS will allow sick pay requests at the Post Office – 03/07/2024 – Market

INSS (National Social Security Institute) policyholders who need to apply for temporary incapacity benefit (the old sickness benefit) will soon be able to make the request and deliver the medical certificate at post offices.

The opening of the new service channel is part of the organization’s strategy to expand the use of Atestmed, an online system that eliminates the need for in-person expertise.

The president of INSS, Alessandro Stefanutto, says that the objective is to grant 100% of disability benefits through Atestmed by April 30th.

“So that we can reach 100%, we are already in very advanced contact with the Post Office so that Atestmed is also required or supplemented at the Post Office, because we still have a part of the population that is digitally excluded”, he tells Sheet.

Testing should begin with a pilot in Fortaleza from March 18, but the idea is to expand the model to a national level.

The insured will have two options. The first is to go directly to the Post Office, where an employee will place the order and scan the medical certificate. According to Stefanutto, the idea is that this service does not need to be scheduled — unlike going to INSS’s own agencies.

Another alternative is to initiate the request through the 135 telephone exchange and go to the Post Office just to present the medical certificate to complement the request.

“The person will just bring the certificate and they [funcionários dos Correios] they will make the application, or the person will be able to make the application on 135 and then just take the certificate to the Post Office. We are going to make it quite broad, so that the population does not have any difficulties. It will be a change made gradually, no one will turn the key overnight”, says Stefanutto.

In practice, the measure will end the possibility of an insured person requesting an in-person medical examination in cases of temporary incapacity.

The government’s argument is that this frees up the experts’ workforce for other analyses, such as BPC (Continuous Payment Benefit) applications or periodic review of other benefits.

Furthermore, the Executive claims to see a saving of resources with the more intensive use of Atestmed, since greater agility in assessments minimizes the risk of paying the benefit over a longer period of time just because there was a delay in the analysis, regardless of whether the insured person has already registered. recovered.

The system allows you to make the request via the Meu INSS app or website and present the medical certificate in digital format, without leaving home. The INSS analyzes the documents for compliance and, if everything is correct, grants the benefit.

Last year, Atestmed was used in 30% to 40% of temporary disability benefit applications. In December, this percentage reached almost 50%, according to Stefanutto.

“As it was in December, we saved R$170 million. The moment I double that [para chegar a 100% pelo sistema digital]we should reach savings of R$350 million to R$400 million per month”, says the president of the INSS. In the year, the body projects a gain of close to R$5 billion with the use of technology.

The main barrier to expanding the use of the tool is policyholders’ lack of familiarity with the digital environment.

“I cannot, to save more money, force [a usar o Atestmed por conta própria] or leave the person without benefit”, says the president of INSS.

“When we close the possibility of carrying out the inspection in person and require that it only be done with a certificate, I have to have multichannels so that people can take their certificate. That person who cannot take a photo on their cell phone, does not have a cell phone, [que ela] can make the request, as it is our agency, but mainly the Post Office, because the Post Office has a very large network”, he adds.

The government’s bet is on gaining capillarity. The INSS has around 1,600 agencies across the country, while Correios has around 11,000 units, of which almost 7,000 are its own agencies (the rest are outsourced).

The implementation of teleexpertise has been resisted by experts, who claim that there is an opinion from the federal council of the category that is contrary to the measure.

Stefanutto, however, has said on other occasions that there is nothing that justifies forcing an insured person to walk kilometers to have an in-person examination when it is possible to carry out online consultations.

The institute is also using artificial intelligence and data analysis to prevent fraud. All requests are fed into a database with millions of certificates, from which it is possible to cross-reference information about doctors, such as which hospital they work in and whether the registration number with the medical council actually belongs to that professional.

The INSS has already detected cases of different signatures for the same professional, which helped to avoid granting an undue benefit.

If, on the one hand, the implementation of online expertise contributed to reducing the stock of pending appointments (from 1.2 million in September 2023 to 880 thousand in January 2024), on the other hand, faster analysis also boosted the number of concessions and, consequently, short-term expenses.

Stefanutto argues that the benefits granted merely represent the regularization of the flow of payments that would already have to be made in the future, including the application of interest and monetary correction. But he recognizes that the measure ends up generating greater payroll growth — which puts pressure on expenses.

Last December alone, the INSS granted 240,000 new benefits for temporary incapacity, 56.8% more than in the same month of 2022.

He also highlights that the Social Security payroll is influenced by the monetary correction of benefits, as well as by vegetative growth via the granting of other benefits.

“The economy [esperada com as medidas] is not enough to knock down the vegetative growth of the leaf”, he acknowledges.

In addition to Atestmed, INSS intends to adopt other measures to help contain expenses.

One of them is to expand data integration with state bases, such as Detran. The agency also wants to invest in technology to improve the prevention, detection and containment of fraud arising from “cyber incidents”. The estimate is to save at least R$1.2 billion with this initiative.