1) The initiative for the RIT can come from:
- the employee on sick leave or their treating physician with the employee's consent
- the employer
- from the moment the employee has been on uninterrupted sick leave for 3 months
- or from the moment the employee provides them with a certificate from their treating physician showing definitive unsuitability to perform the agreed work.
The trajectory can no longer be initiated by the advisory physician of the health insurance fund.
2) There are still 3 possible decisions:
A = the employee can eventually resume the agreed work and can temporarily perform adapted/different work
B = the employee is definitively unfit for the agreed work and can perform adapted/different work
C = the reintegration assessment is not possible for medical reasons
No further re-evaluations are provided. There is 1 assessment per trajectory.
The assessment ‘definitively unfit for all work with the current employer’ is no longer possible.
3) The employee must be invited 3 times by the external service with a minimum interval of 14 days.
If they do not respond to this, the trajectory stops and the employer is informed.
The employer can provide for this in their work regulations.
4) Adjustment of several deadlines:
- the employer can start the RIT after 3 months
- the doctor has 49 calendar days to submit their assessment
- the employee has 21 calendar days to appeal
- judgment of an appeal within 42 calendar days
- adjusted deadlines within which the employer must draw up the reintegration plan
temporary adjustment: 63 calendar days
definitive adjustment: 6 months
- the employee has 14 calendar days to approve or not approve the plan
- after decision C (no assessment possible), there is a 3-month waiting period for the employer and employee before a new trajectory can be started.
5) The collective reintegration policy is strengthened.
The occupational physician annually provides a report to the employer and the CPBW on a number of contacts, described in the Royal Decree (e.g., number of spontaneous consultations, number of RITs, number of visits for return to work..). The employer provides the CPBW with global data on the prepared RI plans and motivated reports.
All of this must be done anonymously with protection of the individual data of the employee.
The policy must be evaluated annually in the presence of the occupational physician.
6) In addition, the Royal Decree provides for contact with the incapacitated employee after 4 weeks of absence, with a view to promoting return to work.
It introduces a new information obligation, which means that the occupational physician (or the nurses assisting them) must inform the incapacitated employee as soon as possible about the possibilities that exist for returning to work, namely a visit prior to returning to work or a reintegration trajectory.
7) Termination of the employment contract due to medical force majeure is decoupled from the reintegration trajectory. More info on this at Medical force majeure
