FMLA Recertification

kcederberg

Just when I thought I knew everything about intermittent FMLA, I found the following excerpt pulled from this website.

"Procedure for Recertification. Once you ask the employee to submit a recertification, she has at least 15 days to get it to you; although, you can allow her to have a longer time period. Keep in mind that your company must pay the cost of the recertification, such as a doctor’s bill and travel expenses. The recertification is final. You cannot request a second or third opinion on the recertification."

Are employers legally obligated to pay for an employees doctor's bills and travel expense when we ask them to recertify? I honestly have never heard this before.

Urgghh.

NaeNae55

I thought we had to pay for second opinions, but this is the first I have heard that we have to pay for recert. Did this come about with the new regs?

kcederberg

I am pretty darn sure this is not in the regs. I have been to a couple of legal seminars after the new regs were published and this was never mentioned. I found this under the Family Medical Leave Act section under Recertification. I hoping it is an error.

Julie Athey

You are correct about the cost of recertification. 29 C.F.R. § 825.308(f) provides that: "Any recertification requested by the employer shall be at the employee's expense unless the employer provides otherwise."

I will make sure that the error is corrected. As far as I can tell, it appears only in the website's FMLA summary and not in any of our FMLA publications. We apologize for the confusion, and thanks for pointing this out.

Julie Athey

Sharon McKnight SPHR

As Julie mentioned, we've corrected the topic page on HRLaws where we found the text but would like to make sure there's not another area with misinformation.

kcederberg, could you let me know where on the website you found the text if it wasn't on the topic page at: [URL]http://www.hrlaws.com/family-and-medical-leave-act-fmla[/URL] ?

Thanks.

Sharon

kcederberg

Sharon,

The link you provided is the exact location where I found the information about recertification.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.