Medical officer
Source: Serviceportal Rheinland-PfalzIn Rhineland-Palatinate, the district administrations perform the tasks of the lower health authorities. The districts are obliged to set up health authorities for this purpose, which are also responsible for the care of citizens in the neighboring independent towns. The health authorities are headed by a public health officer.
The health authorities have a general legal mandate to monitor, examine and assess the health conditions of the population in their district. This applies in particular to protection against communicable diseases. The public health officers carry out extensive activities, for example in the areas of health prevention, infection protection and environmental hygiene.
One important task is to carry out medical examinations and assessments and to issue expert reports, certificates and attestations. Many legal provisions expressly require an official medical examination. One of the reasons for this is that public health officers are characterized by their particular independence and their special additional expertise in the field of public administration. As a rule, they act on behalf of other authorities or in accordance with their statutory duties.
The health authorities have a wide range of monitoring tasks with regard to compliance with hygiene regulations, for example in hospitals and other community facilities.
Examples of official medical activities and examinations on behalf of authorities:
- Recruitment examinations of applicants for the civil service
- Determination of health suitability for the exercise of certain professions
- Fitness for duty of civil servants
- Fitness for work of employees in the public sector
- Assessments in accordance with SGB XII
- Determination of the medical necessity of remedies and aids as well as
- Therapeutic and sanatorium cures for public service employees
- Assessment of capacity for imprisonment, capacity to stand trial, culpability, capacity to work/earn, care in the legal sense for courts
- Determination of a person's fitness to travel, e.g. for courts and immigration authorities
- Determining the medical fitness to drive motor vehicles
- Students: Determination of inability to take examinations for health reasons
- Students: Extension of the submission deadline for a diploma thesis due to illness
- Certification of the necessity of a cure for the tax office
The health authorities in Rhineland-Palatinate offer consultation hours on sexually transmitted diseases and you can have free HIV tests carried out at the AIDS counseling centers. The health authorities are also responsible for tuberculosis counseling.
School and youth medical services and social psychiatric services are usually affiliated with the health authorities.