Sending a control doctor as employer in Belgium

As an employer in Belgium, you may send a control doctor every time an employee reports sick. You choose and pay the doctor yourself: a check without a contract costs, for example, € 128 excluding VAT. The employee cannot refuse it. With a clause in your work rules, they must stay available for up to 4 hours a day for a check.

How do you send a control doctor as an employer?

You need neither the employee's consent nor a waiting period. As soon as they report sick, you can request a check. This is how to go about it:

1. Record the sick report. Ask where the employee is staying if it is not their usual address.
2. Request the check. Go through a medical control organisation or a control doctor of your choice. The doctor must meet the requirements of the Belgian law on control medicine. Pass on the name, address, phone number and the period on the certificate.
3. The control doctor visits or invites. If the certificate allows the employee to leave home, the doctor may ask them to come to the practice. You pay the employee's travel costs.
4. You receive the result. The control doctor tells you whether the employee is unfit for work and until when. You never receive the diagnosis.
5. You act on the result. If the doctor finds the employee can return earlier, you expect them back on that date. If they do not come, you can refuse pay from that date.

The control doctor hands the written findings to the employee as soon as possible. They may contact the treating doctor first to resolve a disagreement.

What does a control doctor cost the employer?

There is no statutory fee. Each control organisation sets its own price. At Mediwe, a completed check without a contract costs € 128 excluding VAT, including the home visit, mileage and report. With an annual contract, the price per check is usually lower. Checks at weekends or on public holidays cost extra.

Compare that with the cost of a sick day. A white-collar employee on € 140 gross per working day who returns three working days earlier after a check saves you € 420 of guaranteed salary, before employer contributions. One successful check pays for several.

When should an employer send a control doctor?

A check only saves money while you are paying guaranteed salary yourself. That is the first 30 days of a sickness. After that, the health insurance fund pays and its medical adviser decides. Our guide on guaranteed salary in Belgium shows what you pay per day for blue-collar and white-collar staff.

Since 1 January 2026, the 8-week relapse period has applied. If an employee falls ill again with the same condition within that period, you do not pay a new guaranteed salary period, only the balance of the previous one. If they bring a certificate for a different illness, a new period of 30 days does start. That is exactly when a check is worth the most.

Sending a control doctor pays off mainly:

• in the first days of a new sickness period, when an early return still saves days of pay;
• for a relapse with a "different illness" certificate;
• for a pattern of short absences around weekends, public holidays or refused leave;
• on a day without a certificate. An employee may stay off without a certificate on the first sick day 2 times per calendar year, except in companies with fewer than 50 employees that exclude this in a collective agreement or their work rules. If they are not at their usual address that day, they must tell you straight away where they are. A check remains possible.

Do not send a control doctor as a reflex for every sick report. Employees who feel distrusted disengage, and the contact procedure for sick employees may never be used as a check.

What if the employee misses the control doctor?

Whether a missed check has consequences depends on your work rules.

With an availability window, the employee must stay available at home or at the address they gave you during a fixed part of the day. If they are away without a valid reason or force majeure, that can count as avoiding the check. Valid reasons include a hospital stay, an appointment with their own doctor or a trip to the pharmacy for urgent medication.

Without an availability window, a missed check is hard to sanction. The control doctor will usually leave a notice asking the employee to come to the practice. If their certificate allows them to leave home and they ignore it without a valid reason, they are avoiding the check.

Loss of guaranteed salary after the control doctor

An employee who avoids the check without a valid reason can lose their right to guaranteed salary for the sick days before the check that eventually takes place. If the control doctor finds the employee fit for work, you can refuse pay from the date of the first check, except for the period that is not disputed.

What if the employee disputes the control doctor?

If the employee disagrees, they have it noted on the findings straight away. Arbitration follows:

1. Within 2 working days of the findings being handed over, either party appoints an arbitrating doctor, by mutual agreement or from the official list.
2. The arbitrating doctor examines the employee and decides within 3 working days of being appointed.
3. The decision is final and binds both parties. You and the employee receive it by registered letter.

The losing party pays the costs: the arbitrating doctor's fee of € 130.58 and € 66.16 in administrative costs, plus any travel costs of the employee.

A clause for your work rules

The law allows a collective agreement or the work rules (arbeidsreglement) to set a window of at most 4 consecutive hours between 7:00 and 20:00 during which the sick employee stays home for a check. Keep it limited in time: the Federal Public Service Employment points out that such a window is mainly useful at the start of a sickness. An example:

Checks during incapacity for work. The employer may have the incapacity for work checked by a control doctor whom the employer appoints and pays. During the first fourteen calendar days of each incapacity for work, the employee remains available every day from 10:00 to 14:00 for a visit from the control doctor, at their home or at the address of stay they have given the employer. Absence during this window without a valid reason or force majeure counts as avoiding the check.

Download the work rules template with this clause in Word and PDF, in Dutch and French.

An annex to the work rules is not enough: you follow the normal amendment procedure. Our guide on drawing up work rules explains how. Use the same article to set the deadline for the sick note. More in our blog on the sick note and the employer.

What Business Centrum does for you

Business Centrum tracks your employees' sickness periods in your payroll, together with Acerta. We see when a sick report is a relapse, when a new guaranteed salary period starts and therefore when a check can save you money. After a check, we process the right days of pay. Sickness and leave run through our leave and absence service.