The employers’ association CEOE-Tenerife says it has drawn up a list of health centres which it claims show an above-average tendency to issue sick notes. The announcement sparked strong reactions on 27 September 2026 in Tenerife . Doctors, their professional bodies and unions reject the blanket insinuation that they issue “easy” fitness-for-work certificates and warn against political pressure on clinical decisions.
The Consejo Canario de Colegios de Médicos stresses that a finding of Incapacity for work must be based exclusively on an individual examination and medical judgement. Differences in rates between health centres should not automatically be interpreted as misconduct, but call for an objective analysis of possible causes — such as different patient profiles, workloads or sectoral risks.
Unions point out that sickness absence is often linked to working conditions, stress, inadequate prevention and a failure to adapt jobs to health limitations. They criticise rhetoric about “fraudulent” sick notes as unfounded and stigmatising. The Canary Islands Government points out that the procedures for reviewing and ending incapacity for work are governed by law and subject to medical decision-making authority.
The debate is sensitive from a data protection perspective. Previously, an anonymous reporting channel run by CEOE-Tenerife had already been reported to the Ministerio de Trabajo at the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos . Legally permissible checks require a clear legal basis, purpose limitation and protection of personal data. Blanket lists of supposed “outlier centres” risk discrediting professional groups and institutions without providing solid evidence of systematic misconduct.
The employers’ side points to rising absence rates in certain sectors and calls for stricter checks. Whether, and in what form, additional review mechanisms would be appropriate remains open. In the view of medical bodies, any reform should meet three conditions: safeguarding clinical independence, strict compliance with data protection rules, and an analysis of causes that also takes account of work organisation, prevention and health protection. There is so far no evidence that the health centres criticised by CEOE-Tenerife systematically issue unjustified certificates. The dispute is therefore likely to be decided less by individual certificates than by structural issues — from workplace quality to the availability of occupational health adjustments.
Editor: Clara Simonichek (Article created with AI assistance).