Can employee be required to post-pone elective surgery?

HR in VA

Situation: An employee has been considering elective knee surgery since at least March 2003 (at that time she submitted certification for light duty due to "scheduled surgery".)

She has now announced that she has scheduled the surgery for early Dec and will be out the rest of Dec and return in Jan. Ofcourse we have trouble scheduling regular leave requests during this time as it is (in order to provide worker coverage).

Can we require her to post-pone or to provide medical certification that it has to be done at that time?

LindaS

Based on my past experience, knee surgery is not the type that would be considered "elective". It's very possible that the employee has some type of degenerative issue with her knee wherein the physician has informed her that surgery would be required at some point in the future and she has held off for as long as possible. If she and her physician feels that the time has come for surgery, there isn't much you can do except provide her with the necessary paperwork for FMLA leave. I would not ask her to postpone the surgery, however.