Return-to-Work Opinions After Psychiatric Leave: Fitness for Duty in New York

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Employment and Fitness

A return-to-work opinion is not a discharge summary with a job title attached. The employer is not asking whether the employee is well; it is asking whether this person can safely perform these specific duties, and that is a functional question the treating relationship rarely answers cleanly. What the employer is actually entitled to ask A fitness-for-duty evaluation after psychiatric leave lives at the intersection of disability law and occupational risk, and the governing standards constrain it tightly. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, an employer may require a medical examination or inquiry of a current employee only when it is "job-related and consistent with business necessit

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