Medical Leave for Burnout Forum

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have experience with this? Mostly interested in the mechanics, i.e. getting leave approved, getting approval from insurance company to keep paying salary and getting doctor's sign off to return to the office and any difficulties with any of the above. I am seriously thinking of trying to take leave for 1-2 months. With my current burnout and general depression symptoms, I'm pretty confident I would get the initial leave approved by a doctor so my firm would be satisfied but not sure if insurance has higher requirements that are harder to meet? Also concerned about returning to the office as I wouldn't want to take too long off given progression, bonus etc. implications but heard from a friend that her doctor didn't sign off on her fitness to return to the office for several weeks after she wanted to return ...

[CanadianWolf]

Do you have any available vacation time ?

[jotarokujo]

mechanics are the easiest part of this. talk to HR about doing medical leave. they don't even generally need information about what the medical problem is. if you need documentation just ask your therapist, don't need to go to any special doctor or anything.

Im not sure what your insurance concerns are, can you say more about that

[nixy]

Yeah, I’m confused about the insurance concerns as well. Your firm should be the one deciding whether your salary gets paid. Insurance approves payment for specific medical procedures, but leave isn’t a medical procedure for which they’d have to pay a medical provider. So not sure why they’d have anything to say about it, as long as you’re still employed by your firm (which you would be - that’s the whole point of leave). I could be missing something though.

[papermateflair]

Are you trying to see if you'll have short-term disability coverage? You would need to check the policy. I would think your firm will likely provide you with paid FMLA regardless of whether it's covered by the disability insurance policy. You really just need to contact HR, and find out what information they need from your doctor.

[Anonymous User]

Original poster here - Thank you everyone!

My understanding is that my firm has a pretty low threshold for accepting medical leave, just a doctor signing a form. But my firm purchased insurance that will pay my salary while I'm on leave so the insurance company also needs to approve the leave (otherwise it becomes unpaid leave which creates other issues I don't want to go into). I'm not sure how high the insurance company's thresholds are - if it's just a doctor telling them that medical leave was medically indicated, that should be fine.

Does anyone have experience with returning from medical leave? Any roadblocks there?

[Anonymous User]

Original poster here - Thank you everyone!

My understanding is that my firm has a pretty low threshold for accepting medical leave, just a doctor signing a form. But my firm purchased insurance that will pay my salary while I'm on leave so the insurance company also needs to approve the leave (otherwise it becomes unpaid leave which creates other issues I don't want to go into). I'm not sure how high the insurance company's thresholds are - if it's just a doctor telling them that medical leave was medically indicated, that should be fine.

Does anyone have experience with returning from medical leave? Any roadblocks there?

I took some medial leave for burnout. It was pretty much as you describe - i.e. if any longer than a week the firm required you to go on short term disability (rather than just take sick time), which triggers your pay coverage. I think the view at HR is that sick time is just lost hours for the firm, but if you're disabled the firm's insurance policy will give them something too, or maybe it's a tax benefit if an employee is on disability, in any case they require it. HR was clearly very familiar with the situation and it was routine for them. I didn't have a usual doctor and an HR rep told me something like "you can make a same day appointment at the so-and-so clinic a block away and just ask for a piece of paper saying 'Associate requires leave for medical reasons' and that's it." That's what I did and was in and out of the clinic in 15 minutes. I felt much, much better after taking the break. Obviously each person's situation is different, but I found it jarring that the situation was cast in the terms of "mental health episode" and "disabled" rather than the "burnout" and "taking a break", but the reality is that "burnout" isn't a diagnosis, it's just the way we speak informally.

[nixy]

Original poster here - Thank you everyone!

My understanding is that my firm has a pretty low threshold for accepting medical leave, just a doctor signing a form. But my firm purchased insurance that will pay my salary while I'm on leave so the insurance company also needs to approve the leave (otherwise it becomes unpaid leave which creates other issues I don't want to go into). I'm not sure how high the insurance company's thresholds are - if it's just a doctor telling them that medical leave was medically indicated, that should be fine.

Does anyone have experience with returning from medical leave? Any roadblocks there?

ahhhh, got it, thanks for explaining. Sounds like as long as you have a doctor's sign-off, you should be fine. Best of luck recovering!