FMLA certifications, disability forms, workers’ comp, parking placards — the stack that lands in your inbox and that nobody taught you in residency. I walk through how to actually complete them: what each section is asking, what gets them sent back, and how to get through them faster.
The video walkthroughs are in production. These are the written versions — full field-by-field detail, no signup.
The FMLA medical certification for an employee’s own serious health condition, section by section — including the two boxes that account for most of the packets that come back incomplete.
Read the guideWhat the regulations actually say about who pays for the certification, what a practice may and may not bill for, and where the common advice gets it wrong.
Read the guideAn honest look: what a general chatbot does well on these forms, and four places it structurally breaks down.
Read the guideNot “practice management.” The actual documents, named, one at a time.
WH-380-E and WH-380-F, plus the military-family and caregiver forms (WH-384, WH-385, WH-385-V).
Carrier Attending Physician Statements — the ones that arrive as a fresh packet per claim.
OWCP CA-17 duty-status reports and CA-20 attending physician’s reports.
The application is different in every state, and the certifying criteria are not the same either.
Manufacturer applications for patients who cannot afford the drug you just prescribed.
The form that can wipe out a patient’s federal student loans, and what it requires of you.
What the reviewer is looking for, and what makes a peer-to-peer go your way.
Work restrictions, school accommodations, service-animal requests, travel clearance.
I got tired of doing these one packet at a time, so I built software for it. Patient Papers takes the same forms covered here, turns each one into a short set of plain questions, and fills the real PDF.
It exists because a physician’s evening is a bad place to keep re-deriving what box 6 wants.
I’m a practicing physician. I still complete these forms myself, most weeks — which is the whole qualification. There is no consultant standing between me and the paperwork.
Everything here is educational. It is not legal, financial, or medical advice, and it is no substitute for your own judgment about your own patient.
One form at a time, start to finish, with the form on screen.
Subscribing there is the only list I keep — there is no email signup on this site.