Local incident highlights business of fake medical excuses
When a client contacted Arlene Vernon about calling a doctor’s office to verify a medical excuse provided by an employee, Vernon wasn’t sure if the client was on safe legal ground.
“My gut reaction was that calling a medical office regarding a patient could violate HIPAA or the patient’s confidentiality,” Vernon, a human resources consultant and trainer, said in a blog post about the incident. “But then I thought, all she’s doing is verifying that a doctor’s note from this particular clinic was actually written by someone in the clinic.”
Still unsure what to tell the client, Vernon decided to do some online research before offering advice. That’s when her eyes opened wide.
“The first items that appeared from the search were not HR or legal dialogues on the ethics related to double checking the validity of an employee’s doctor’s note,” Vernon wrote. “The first items were lists of websites where you could purchase and/or download fake doctors’ notes that looked legitimate enough to fool employees and schools.”
Faking medical excuses is big business, it appears.
The issue came to light locally this week when news reports said a man was offering for sale on Facebook what he claimed was a signed doctor’s note from Regional Medical Center. The note, posted in a private Facebook group, has since been deleted.
A spokeswoman for Regional Medical said Friday the seller was not a current or former employee.
She said the hospital is continuing to look into the situation. She added that faking medical excuses is nothing new, though online availability has made it easier.
A quick search, as both Vernon and Regional Medical noted, bears out that reality.
One website, BestFakeDoctorsNotes. net, proudly notes that it has been voted the Internet’s most reliable source for fake doctor’s excuse notes.
For a $1 trial offer and $17.97 per month thereafter if you need a steady supply of fake notes, the site will sell a pack of 30 providing a variety of excuses from a range of medical professionals. Instructions say you simply edit the selected note template and print. Testimonials praise the authenticity. “I’ve used them for numerous things now,” wrote someone identified as Debra Jackson of Houston, Texas. “It worked very well for me. I used the dentist note ... worked out perfectly .... ”
No one answered repeated calls to the phone number provided by the website, nor did anyone respond to a provided live chat session. The site’s FAQ assures the website is an active business that has been questioned neither by the Federal Trade Commission nor any state’s attorney general for its business practices.
A similar online business, Phoney Excuses.com, proudly displays a video on its website of a local TV station that put its fake notes to the test and found they worked.
“All this being out there just means it has to be more prevalent than we know,” Vernon, based in Minnesota, said by phone this week in a follow-up conversation to her 2013 blog post on the topic.
Yet, despite the prevalence, Vernon said she hasn’t heard of anyone actually trying to pass off one of these fake online notes to any of the hundreds of contacts she has with employers in her role as a consultant.
“I know there are employees out there ripping off the system,” she said, “but I think it’s probably in organizations where they are not monitoring the veracity of the documents. Maybe they don’t have an HR department and the manager just glances at it and says it’s fine.”
When an employer does doubt the authenticity of a medical excuse, Vernon suggests proceeding cautiously to avoid legal problems.
“They could contact (a doctor’s office) and say, ‘We have reason to believe a document with your name on it has been falsified. We don’t want any medical information, but we do want to know if this is an authentic document.’ That way, you’re approaching it from an ‘authentic document’ perspective as opposed to seeking medical information.”
Of course, BestFakeDoctorsNotes. net has an answer for that.
The website’s FAQ page recommends customers take advantage of a no-cost call-back verification feature. The feature allows users to set up a phone number, in their area code, with an automated voice messaging system.
“You will then be able to upload premade MP3 files that will sound like an authentic hospital, clinic or even a doctor’s answering machine,” the site says.
Another option for suspicious employers, Vernon said, is to ask the employee to get a second opinion, making it more difficult to continue faking it.
And employees should make sure they consider it worth the risk, she added, because lying about a medical excuse is almost always grounds for termination or disciplinary action.