Many of you will have seen computerised IB85 medical reports which state:

"customer walks dog twice a day"

when the only dog the client cares for is in the mind of the examining doctor.

Bearing in mind that Oxford does have a certain river running through it, the latest figment of an examining doctors imagination:

"The customer used the ferry on the way here today"

I wonder why tribunal's call the relaibility of any of the 'evidence' in an IB85 into question?

Ah yes, these entries never fail to amuse and annoy.

'Always likes to make hot drinks' so what!?

' Came to the medical alone' when their friend and driver is in the waiting room.

one of my favourites:

"usually manages to do housework sometimes"

I've never yet met anyone who can extrapolate from that whether or not the claimant actually does the housework and how often they actually do it!

An old favourite was "keeps busy doing housework". I have just fairly thoroughly vacuumed my house from top to bottom for the first time for God knows how long and it took me twenty minutes. That leaves time for a lot of sitting doing nothing.

I've just seen one where the imagination of the doctor had the appellant sitting for hours knitting - she doesn't know how.

Never mind the person who "came to the medical today on the tramp"

perhaps the doctor meant tram?!

My best one was the client who, when asked what she did all day said "I just potter about which turned into "client does pottery all day" on the report,to her and the Tribunal's utter bafflement.

Perhaps I should have asked for a direction that the Sof S should produce evidence of the pottery, perhaps a nice fruit bowl !!

I had clients considered able to do lots of things because they were able to 'prepare light meals for themselves' (in fact they could not cook an egg but lived on sandwiches). I has one who watched lots of soaps (in fact he hates soaps) and another who could answer the phone and take a message because she was 'going grocery shopping alone'... I also found subtle errors in law embedded in the 'reasoning' of LiMA.

Serious medical assessments should not be based on picking inadequate sentences from ready-made drop-down menus, and a computer programme should not be a substitute for the doctor's brain.

I have informed the BMA about this, but I don't know if the BMA will ever bother to reply. Yet when a tribunal is asked to give less weight to the opinion of my clients' GPs and prefer the nonsense generated by a brainless computer this is an insult to the professionalism of our GPs.

Two serious defects in the LIMA system are:

It takes the answer "adjusts daytime activities to take account of sleep problems" to mean that there is NO effect on daytime activities;

It takes the answer "would like to work when illness is better" to mean that the claimant is NOT afraid that work would worsen condition.

Neither of these can be supported as a possible meaning of the plain words of the answer.

The most regular anomaly (sp) we see is where the examiniation takes 20 minutes and the EMP states "sat comfortably for 30 minutes in the examiniation."

I fail to see how a decision maker cannot identify this sort of contradiction when they're preparing their submission - it must be obvious that we will pull it out and so undermine the whole document?!!!

Another common discrepancy is around activities 5 & 6 (rising & bending/kneeling). The standard justification for finding "no problem" is this:

"Despite complaining of X, based on the history....the customer has for the majority of the time, no significant restriction of....rising and bending or kneeling."

I argue that the words "majority of the time" logically imply that the "sometimes" descriptors <5(c) & 6(c)> are satisfied - scoring 3 pts each. It usually (but not always) works at tribunal, particularly if there are other discrepancies in the IB85.

Matthew

In the mind or in the LIMA script, that is the question? as old William Spearshaker would say.

Spearshaker??? lol

Sorry about that I used to have a English teacher who wrote the school plays, and always signed them under the pseudoym Bill Spearshaker , as a nod of respect to the Great Bard William Shakespeare (or was Anne Hathaway)

Just wanted to add my favourite observation:
"Can take adequate care of his goldfish"

... because they need a lot of looking after, you know. Especially if they're not really there.

Hi
I challenge you to find one better than this:

'manages to make ready-male meals for themselves'

Yes, well, that's men's idea of cooking all over, isn't it? What do you suppose a ready-male meal consists of- a nice plate of curry and chips and a beer?

Nice one!
The other thing that always annoys me is the snidey comments. Things like 'wore a clean lumber support belt' (presumably to indicate that the client doesn't usually need to wear one at all and only did so to look more disabled than they are). We pointed out at the appeal that not only did the client have several lumber support belts, he even washed them occasionally!

The Mail on Sunday (I believe) made some comments this week about a a privately run benefits related website, which I shall not name, but which they termed 'scroungers' dot com (I heard in on the radio).

It seems to me that some of the examples quoted above - to keep people OFF benefit; are quite akin, though opposite in nature, to those quoted from the aforementinoed website to keep people ON benefit.

Who's right and Who's wrong! Who has the moral high ground? Who has more benefit than allowance!? Please, vote off, the weakest link!

Whether or not claimants are 'genuine' is not an issue in this particular discussion - in fact a really skilled PCA should be advocated by those who like to moan about this issue.

Here we are discussing about a SYSTEMATIC use, by a private contractor for the DWP who is making a killing from the public money, of a computerised system which fails claimants on the basis of illogical deductions and ridiculous assertions. It also (as I said earlier) had problems with the interpretation of the law embedded in the programme. This is a blatant breach of the claimants' right to have a fair and skilled medical assessment.

In all my career I have found out that genuine claimants, expecially people with mental disabilities, are those who get into troubles with such automated PCAs.

I have now received a letter from the BMA which says that they are having a word with Atos Healthcare about the deskilling of medical assessments. This would be a good occasion for those of you who are concerned with the LiMA system to write to the BMA now, with some examples of computer generated stupidity.

Their address: BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JP.