Executive Decree 29 of 2026: Medical Incapacity Certificates

What the Reform to Executive Decree No. 17 of 2025 Entails

By: Estefanía Guardia – Associate

To combat the falsification of medical leave certificates used to justify absences from work, the Executive Branch issued Executive Decree No. 17 of 2025 on August 11, 2025, regulating the formalities and conditions for issuing medical leave certificates and the procedure for verifying their authenticity and validity.

A year later, that regulation underwent significant adjustments.

Executive Decree No. 29 of August 19, 2026 amended numeral 8 of Article 8 of Executive Decree No. 17 of 2025. With this change, if the Regional Health Authority detects conduct that may constitute a criminal offense during the verification of a certificate, it must formally report the matter to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Additionally, the ” Medical Leave Certificate Authenticity Verification Form ” was approved. This document will be mandatory for use by the competent administrative units to verify the validity of leave claims.

The enactment of this decree is a positive development. By tightening controls and expediting reporting to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, it discourages the falsification of leave certificates and ensures more serious consequences for those who commit this type of fraud.

For employers, once the falsity of the certificate is proven, they may dismiss the employee who falsified the certificate, citing just cause of a disciplinary nature. This dismissal is based on the lack of integrity or dishonesty, as well as the commission of a presumably criminal act.

Article 13 of the Labor Code establishes that an employer’s right to dismiss for just cause is subject to a two-month limitation period, calculated from the date on which the misconduct occurred; however, when the misconduct constitutes a criminal offense, the period does not begin to run on the date of the misconduct, but rather on the date on which the employer becomes aware of it.

In our view, this period would begin to run from the moment the employer receives official certification that the document submitted by the employee is false.

Executive Decree No. 29 of 2026 consolidates the decentralized verification model initiated in 2025 with Executive Decree No. 17, since it (i) expressly assigns Regional Health Authorities the duty to report to the Public Prosecutor’s Office any presumably criminal acts detected, and (ii) formalizes a single form as the standard instrument for conducting such verification.

Together, these measures aim to strengthen the integrity of medical leave certificates as public documents and to deter their falsification, with significant implications for the day-to-day management of employment relationships.

Does your company need to update its incapacity verification protocols? Write to us at bd@icazalaw.com.