Doctoring of sick note? How serious is this?

[Lushmetender]

I have a staff member on second sick note. I should of got it at beginning of month. Have asked many times and we nearly had to send an awol letter. I thought finally it’s come in and I received it today but it’s clear to me the date of the note has been tampered with. It’s clear it’s been dated mid month but 3 digits have been tippexed out to make it look like the 1 st of the month. Eg looks as though it was a double digit say 14 - but the ‘4’ has been tippexed out. This could have been done by the drs surgery but usually they score out and initial it or could have been done by the employee. How seriously would you take this. Sadly I think the person is malingering and seems to be copying a co colleague who eventually got a pay out. I have asked HR what they think but wondered if anyone had a similar situation?

HR Manager here. You can ask the surgery to confirm the dates of fit notes - or ask the employee to provide the original.

While most companies will have a gross misconduct for falsification of Company records, this could be falsification of a statutory document, and therefore potentially fraud in relation to SSP and CSP. More investigation needs to be done here before jumping to any conclusions.

The surgery wouldn't get involved and wouldn't throw a patient off a list because of it. It doesn't affect the surgery if the patient doctored the dates. The surgery I work in and deal with sicknotes everyday. If the dates are incorrect we would do another sicknote with the correct dates. We don't use tippex at all. We send them via text now so they can be emailed on to the employer and less paper and in your case no changing the dates.

We have removed patients from our list for this. It happens fairly often.

I’ve refused to see patients because they’ve doctored their appt card in blue ink and for a time slot that doesn’t exist in the diary.

You are wrong.

Im on long term sick atm and my doctors surgery sends my fit note as an secure attachment( i have to put my dob in to access it)by text that i then email to my employer. My GP practice keeps a paper copy i can ask for, but my HR prefers the electronic one as it can be stored directly to my profile. Im pretty sure anyone can ask for electronic copies and it would have the original, unaltered details. You could tell your employee its a new move to a paperless system so as not to accuse directly until you have the evidence.

The only fit note I've had was issued as a pdf file to forward on to HR, I didn't realise they still handed out paper copies

Have they got mental issues

Sounds suspicious

Agree. Ask for the original Fit Note.