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Atos announce it is deliberately overbooking appointments at its PIP assessment centres

Ken Butler
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Disability Rights UK

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Hi,

At the DWP’s PIP Independent Stakeholder Forum yesterday Atos announced that it is now deliberately overbooking all PIP assessment centre appointments.

The justification for this was that 25% of PIP claimants are failing to attend, without prior notice, Atos PIP assessment centre appointments.

Atos said that overbooking was now the practice following a 6 week trail that resulted in “only” one disabled person being turned away and not seen.

While acknowledging that the overbooking practice will adversely affect some disabled people, Atos sees the practice as a way of reducing the PIP backlog.

I believe that Capita health Care Professionals turn to doing ‘paper assessments’ (to see if a decision recommendation can be made without the need for someone to be seen face-to-face) if someone fails to attend.

Atos said that this is not possible as its face-to-face assessors are not trained to carry out paper assessments.

Is the reason for the stated non-attendance level that a significant minority of disabled people are not sufficiently interested in pursuing there PIP claim to the extent that they do not attend Atos appointments without notifying them in advance? 

Are there other reasons that advisers can point to as to why this may not be the case?

What do people think of this deliberate overbooking?

Dan_Manville
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Mental health & welfare rights service - Wolverhampton City Council

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Ken Butler - 26 September 2014 12:23 PM

Hi,

At the DWP’s PIP Independent Stakeholder Forum yesterday Atos announced that it is now deliberately overbooking all PIP assessment centre appointments.

The justification for this was that 25% of PIP claimants are failing to attend, without prior notice, Atos PIP assessment centre appointments.

Atos said that overbooking was now the practice following a 6 week trail that resulted in “only” one disabled person being turned away and not seen.

While acknowledging that the overbooking practice will adversely affect some disabled people, Atos sees the practice as a way of reducing the PIP backlog.

I believe that Capita health Care Professionals turn to doing ‘paper assessments’ (to see if a decision recommendation can be made without the need for someone to be seen face-to-face) if someone fails to attend.

Atos said that this is not possible as its face-to-face assessors are not trained to carry out paper assessments.

Is the reason for the stated non-attendance level that a significant minority of disabled people are not sufficiently interested in pursuing there PIP claim to the extent that they do not attend Atos appointments without notifying them in advance? 

Are there other reasons that advisers can point to as to why this may not be the case?

What do people think of this deliberate overbooking?

Considering the disatnces that people are needing to travel for assessments I think that there should at least be priority claimants who are guaranteed to get a slot if they show up.

Beyond that; in recent experience Capita are doing paper assessments when people don’t show up. All good!

benefitsadviser
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Sunderland West Advice Project

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I havent come across this before, and ATOS are doing all our assessments.

I think that the average 6 months waiting time before folk are even assessed may be an issue with regard to no shows.

I have done follow up on PIP claimants and a few have said “ive waited so long now that im not bothered any more” and I have to encourage them to stay with the claim to the end.

Some clients ive dealt with havent a clue what PIP is about and dont even appear motivated to claim.
Theyve only ordered the form as a friend or family member suggested it, and when I am helping them complete the questionnaire they seem rather disinterested.
This may explain some no shows also

Geri-G
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Welfare reform team - North Ayrshire Council

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ATOS are currently recruiting staff to do paper assessments

Mike Hughes
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Senior welfare rights officer - Salford City Council Welfare Rights Service

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Gosh, so it would never occur that a disabled person is so disabled they would be unable to attend or unable to attend without a level support that would not be available to them on the day on question! Now, what might the solution to that be? Er, home visits perhaps? No, a paper assessment where we continue to disbelieve because we have been poorly trained. Sigh. 

My consultant in Leicester double books all clinical appointments and then when people haven’t cancelled they either allow lots of sitting around waiting or they cancel one of them. This happened to me recently. I went ballistic. I had rung them the week before the appt. to confirm it would be happening as I needed to book my train ticket from Manchester. Following confirmation on the Wednesday before the appt. (which was the following Wednesday) I booked train tickets on the Thursday and received a letter on the Friday cancelling me.

I queried very loudly whether the person who now had my appt. exclusively to themselves was travelling from further away than me and the appointment was quickly and quietly reinstated.

When I say very loudly, this consisted of a detailed phone coversation; a voicemail and the use of social networks. The latter are a great way of getting the public behind you and embarrassing an organisation publicly.

The place in question had been busy tweeting about the cost of patients not attending appointments. As you can imagine I was somewhat off message and they moved efficiently to make sure I would go away happy and quickly. Unfortunately, not all of our clients are in a position to be able to do this.

Sophia2013
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Redbridge Citizens Advice

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Geri-G - 26 September 2014 03:10 PM

ATOS are currently recruiting staff to do paper assessments


Where did they advisertise that?

Tom B (WRAMAS)
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WRAMAS - Bristol City Council

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I’ve noticed and been told about a lot of last minute cancellations occurring in Bristol recently (either by telephone on the day or when they turn up at the assessment centre). I wonder if that is down to overbooking?

Did they specifically state it was related to PIP only and not also ESA? (I only ask because anecdotally there appear to be similar issues locally)

Ken Butler
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Disability Rights UK

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The announcement at the PIP Independent Stakeholder meeting about overbooking related just to PIP assessments.

The problem is that PIP claimants failing to attend assessments isn’t a problem for Atos - as long as it carries out around 5 assessments per HCP per day it’s not worried.

It’s disturbing that the non-attendance figure is so high - 25%.

For someone who fails to attend to then try and continue with their PIP claim means convincing the DWP that they had good reason to miss their assessment without notice.

The potential PIP claim drop out before assessment rate could be very high.

Thanks very much for the information about Bristol.

If anyone has any other feedback on disabled people being turned away from booked appointments please do let me know by posting in the forum or by email - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Steven Law
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Welfare policy, Citizens Advice

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Hi,

Is anyone still seeing instances of this overbooking?

S