Television for sickness certificates and medicine prescriptions valid for 12 months: new in the simplification bill

The draft law on simplifications will come into force on 18 December with two important innovations for patients and family doctors: the certificate for a worker's absence can also be issued remotely via a television (today, a visit in the doctor's office or at home is compulsory), while the prescription for drugs for chronic patients will be valid for 12 months. These are two measures, clamoured for by the Federation of General Practitioners (Fimmg) precisely in order to lighten the bureaucratic burdens on practices, which, however, will not be operational immediately.

On the television for sickness certificates, the Fimmg emphasises, it will be necessary to wait for an agreement within the State-Regions Conference, while for prescriptions valid for 12 months, it will only take 90 days from 18 December (when the simplification law will come into force) to finalise an implementing decree by the Minister of Health, in agreement with the Minister of the Economy, which will define the modalities for implementing the rule, also to ensure that there are no new or greater burdens on public finance.

With the new regulations, thefamily doctor, unlike today, will be able to issue the sickness certificate to justify the absence at work even remotely, via a telemedicine. Article 58 of the simplification bill, in fact, equates the certification carried out remotely, through telemedicine, with the traditional in-person one. When will this happen? Not immediately, says the Fimmg, explaining that 'the law postpones implementation to a subsequent agreement that will be made at the State-Regions Conference, without indicating any precise deadline: there, at the proposal of the Minister of Health, the cases and procedures for the use of telecertification will be defined'. Until then, the current rules will remain in force: the doctor must ascertain the patient's condition in person, and the protection against false certificates remains in place, with severe penalties for workers and doctors who issue them, whether in person or by telecertification. 'The doctors,' continues Fimmg, 'will continue to be vigilant and actively participate in the determinations by bringing their experience, which they put into play during the pandemic period for the certifications of Covid positives.

According to the Statistical Observatory on the "Single Pole of Sickness Protection" of the Inps, a total of 16.5 million certificates were sent out in the first half of 2025, of which 75.9 per cent were from the private sector, with an overall increase of 5 per cent compared to the same period in 2024. With regard to the activity of inspecting the worker's sickness status, in the first quarter of 2025, approximately 223,000 fiscal visits were carried out, a slight decrease (-3%) compared to the same period of the previous year; this negative trend is also found in the private sector with a variation of -11.4%, while the public sector shows a growth of 7.9%. In relative terms, the number of medical examinations per thousand certificates received fell in both sectors, from 20 to 15 in the private sector and from 46 to 44 in the public sector.

The second novelty of the simplification decree is contained in Article 62 and concerns the possibility for general practitioners to prescribe drugs for chronic pathologies for up to twelve months, reducing the need to continuously repeat prescriptions. As mentioned, a decree of the Ministry of Health will be needed to make the measure operational. At the end of the regulatory process, recalls Fimmg, the doctor will indicate in the repeatable prescription the dosage and the number of packages that can be dispensed over a maximum period of twelve months. The doctor will be able to suspend at any time, the repeatability of the prescription or will be able to change the therapy, if this is required for reasons of monitoring the patient's reduced compliance, knowledge and stratification of adherence behaviours to the therapies already available in a perspective of prescriptive appropriateness aimed at the patient's health outcomes.