When running a company, you have to have a good balance between trusting employees to do the right thing and making sure that they aren’t abusing the systems.

The doctors at this medical facility would often have to give ‘doctor’s notes’ to employees saying that they couldn’t work, but then the company would make them come back again and again for notes saying they could return.

So, the medical team in this story finally got sick of it and started making the employees wait in the lobby for hours just to get the notes they needed until finally their company stopped requiring so much documentation.

Check it out.

paperwork not good enough the first time? no problem, we will do it again. but you’re paying.

Years ago i worked in an isolated location, all energy industry related.

Due to the extent of the isolation, the client company had its own medical facilities, one of which I worked in.

Excessive documentation will make people not seek the care they need.

So, one contract company had a thing about needing excessive paperwork for their guys who were sick. see, the medical care was a line item in the client company budget, so nobody saw a bill.

This made for a system that was easily abused, what with no financial dog in the fight.

So, this one company’s guys would come in periodically, appropriately sick.

They weren’t burning time, they only made money on duty, so they wanted to work.

We’d see them, and often give a day or two of bed rest before returning to work; everyone there was typically on a 2 week tour of duty due to logistics, so a day or two like this wasn’t uncommon or unreasonable.

Patient would be seen, given a note for the boss, go get some rest and take your meds.

But that wasn’t good enough. maybe for every OTHER contractor, but nnnooOOOOoooo, this contractor was SPECIAL.

This contractor doesn’t want people to get any time off.

So, even though they’d been seen by qualified medical staff, and given prescriptions and a note on when they could return to work, this company wanted them evaluated AGAIN and ANOTHER note saying they could actually go back on duty, even if was 12-24 hours since the first visit.

Remember no cost, so what do they care, right?

This didn’t sit well with us.

We had long hours and busy days, often 18-24hrs awake and on duty (with a two week tour of duty), and this was lots of paperwork and time wasting because someone felt like it, not because it was medically necessary.

If we’ve seen the patient and given you a note on when they can go back on duty, my due diligence was done.

So, we decided, after a couple of months of this pattern, to accommodate them.

On our terms.

This is just wasting the medical team’s time.

Guys would come in, ready and willing to go back to work, but still needing another note, because apparently the first one wasn’t nearly good enough and the boss said so.

So, they’d get one, on our terms.

After we’d see all of the morning sick call patients. After our scheduled morning appointments.

They’d be on the clock until we saw them again, sitting in our waiting room, on the clock and drinking coffee, which was typically around 3 hours after the clinic opened.

Each and every one of them, which was typically 2-3 guys, every day (they were a big contractor).

They were surprisingly slow to pick up on it. It took about a month of this approach and once they put it all together they were MAD.

Clearly we were wasting THEIR time, and ours? Why did that matter, we were on duty and the care was free so our opinion didn’t matter.

Having a boss who has your back is critical.

But our bosses backed us 100%, essentially saying “if you went to your doctor and paid for a visit, would you pay again to be told the same thing the next day?”

After that, the paperwork from the medical staff was honored the first time, and everyone’s work days were more efficient.

At least the company finally learned its lesson and stopped wasting everyone’s time and money.

Read on to see what the people in the comments say about this.

This is the way it should always be done.

Very well-played.

Yeah, they were actually pretty mild.

This would have been even better.

I bet the workers love it.

Nothing like wasting an employees time to make a company take note.

This medical facility knew just where to hit them.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.