Sickness benefit: INSS authorizes automatic extension and return to work without medical expertise

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Changes were published in the Official Gazette of the Union this Wednesday and are now in effect. Benefit will be extended every 30 days, automatically, as many times as necessary. The Ministry of Social Security and the National Social Security Institute (INSS) published a joint ordinance, this Wednesday (1st), with two new rules for beneficiaries of sickness benefit. The rules were published in the Official Gazette of the Union and are already in force. Now, the furloughed worker who uses sickness benefit will be able to request to return to work even before the end of the certificate period, and without undergoing a medical examination. In this case, it is up to the beneficiary to request the end of the aid at the INSS agency responsible for the benefit or at Central 135. The other new feature provided for in the ordinance is the automatic extension of sickness benefit every 30 days, as many times as necessary. The extension will be given: regardless of the waiting time to carry out the medical examination, even when the period is less than 30 days; in all Social Security agencies – before this ordinance, extensions could only be made in units offering a vacancy for the examination; as many times as the beneficiary requests – until this Wednesday, the INSS required expertise for the third renewal. According to the INSS, by no longer requiring expertise in these cases, the government will be able to reassign these professionals to more important requests – for example, expertise for granting Continuous Payment Benefits (BPC) to people with disabilities. The new rule is temporary, and may be revised when the INSS manages to reduce the chronic queues that have delayed the granting of several benefits in recent years. READ ALSO: Senate approves creation of program to reduce INSS queues At the end of October, the INSS also began to receive medical certificates as a request for sickness benefit in an attempt to reduce benefit queues. See below: INSS agencies begin to receive certificates for requests for sickness benefit Inspection queue In the last INSS survey, in September, there were 624 thousand Brazilians in the queue for medical examination to obtain sickness benefit. Among them, 282 thousand had been waiting in line for more than 45 days. The institute estimates that there are currently 150,000 people with medical examinations scheduled for the extension of their sick pay who will wait a long time to be able to undergo a medical assessment. The INSS hopes that, with this measure, it will be possible to anticipate these delayed services. “These appointments mean that the insured, regardless of the result of the examination, receives the benefit without requesting a monthly extension. It is important to highlight that this measure, which is provisional and intended to ensure that insured people who are in this situation are encouraged to return to the work without having to wait for expertise”, explains the president of INSS, Alessandro Stefanutto. Furthermore, the new developments will also help to avoid paying aid to workers who were already able to return to work.

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