New Fmla Regulations For 2009

[iheartcats]

I try to plan as much FMLA in advance as possible. This coming few months I have a chunk of appointments/tests and am preparing for my visit to Doctor G.

HR accepted my doctor letter & time off, but said due to new federal regulations for 2009, will require additional documentation from my doctor. They said a fax should suffice as his appointments book quickly because he also does a lot of procedures every week.

I was searching online trying to find changes for Intermittent FMLA (which I am on) and these are the main changes I found:

Definition of ?serious health condition? ? To qualify for FMLA, an employee or family member must be incapacitated for more than three consecutive days and make at least two visits to a healthcare provider (or one visit plus continuing treatment). The proposed regs require those two visits to occur within 30 days of when the period of incapacity starts. Also, to get leave for a chronic condition, the employee or family member must make at least two doctor visits annually.

If an employee's "serious health condition" is based on "periodic visits to a healthcare provider" for a chronic serious health condition, the employee must make at least two visits to a healthcare provider per year. 29 C.F.R. ? 825.115©.

Intermittent Leave. Employees taking intermittent FMLA leave for planned medical treatment must make a "reasonable effort" (as opposed to the previous "attempt") to schedule their leave so that it does not unduly disrupt an employer's operations. 29 C.F.R. ? 825.203.

It looks like it's primarily that you have to make 2 visits a year to a healthcare provider? I do that in a month, usually! I also schedule as many appointments in advance as possible to give adequate time off requests.

Does anyone know of any other changes that will affect us? Has anyone seen the new 'form' that's supposed to be filled out by the doctor (I guess it's a more uniform process this way).

Thanks!

[iheartcats]

I am still waiting on the 'standardized' form - I hear it's due Mid-January...I have a chronic disease so I'm not really concerned about an issue...it's just coordinating with the doctor to get filled out appropriately, etc.

I didn't even know an FMLA bill update had passed!

I'll let you know info about the form once I receive it.