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ATOS rebrands as ‘Independent Assessment Services’ for PIP

Stuart
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ATOS Healthcare is now called Independent Assessment Services when it comes to PIP assessments. All references to ATOS have been replaced in gov.uk PIP publications including in the PIP handbook and the PIP quick guide for support organisations.

The renaming comes with a website for PIP assessments (still having to say ‘delivered by Atos’ in its logo though) which says -

’Our new name better represents the work we do and explains that our role is to independently assess and process Personal Independence Payment cases passed to us from the Department for Work and Pensions.’

https://www.mypipassessment.co.uk/

 

Benny Fitzpatrick
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Welfare Rights Officer, Southway Housing Trust, Manchester

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’Our new name better represents the work we do and explains that our role is to independently assess and process Personal Independence Payment cases passed to us from the Department for Work and Pensions.’

“and is a pretty obvious attempt to distance ourselves from previous bad publicity regarding the inaccuracy of our assessments and our systematic fleecing of UK taxpayers”

Mike Hughes
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I’m sure we could all think of acronyms which better represent the “work” ATOS do!

Andrew Dutton
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The name change isn’t working, chaps - incoming today -

‘I took [claimant] for his PIP Assessment yesterday and I have never felt so angry or upset. What [HCP] put [claimant] through was atrocious. The mental and emotional anguish caused to him is shocking. For almost an hour [HCP] fired questions at him, rephrasing and pushing him until he said something she wanted him to. He ended up in floods of tears. It was as though he was a criminal on the stand and she the prosecution. I as one of his carers was told not to speak [even though claimant] is vulnerable, mentally unable to recall things correctly. I am sickened and astounded.’

Perhaps another name-change….?

Geri-G
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Welfare reform team - North Ayrshire Council

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I am a great believer in complaining to ATOS/ Independent wotsits. Especially about the quality of the HCP report and especially if you win the appeal! They never get told if their cases got to appeal, and win. So I like to tell them! Think they are fed up with me.Obviously need to get clients permission. I don’t complain about them all, just the really really awful ones!
I am starting on Maximus as we speak!

Mike Hughes
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Don’t see how we ever change this other than by complaints. Complain to ATOS/Maximus. Where possible and appropriate complain to the HCPs professional body if it looks like there was a breach of professional standards and so on. The process of doing the latter can be so ludicrously drawn out that the issue is often done and dusted in favour of the claimant so it’s always good to feedback to the professional body how distant the final decision was from the initial assertions.

Today’s pet hate - HCPs who conduct Snellen and near vision tests at less than the required distances and in poor light with shadows and reflections. Oh, and the HCP who tests the hearing of someone with two hearing aids by going into the corner of the room and turning their back and whispering. All three tests are not medically valid unless the person carrying them out does so in the correct conditions. However, the last one… words fail.

Mr Finch
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‘Independent’ is a bit like ‘world-famous’ - the more you have to say it, the less appropriate it probably is.

Atos have just started using the dubious ‘sit in the bath with the plug out’ to deny points to people with epilepsy. This seems to have come straight from DWP appeal writers, not the assessment guide or any case law.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Information and advice resources - Age UK

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Mr Finch - 04 July 2017 11:10 AM

‘Independent’ is a bit like ‘world-famous’ - the more you have to say it, the less appropriate it probably is.

Atos have just started using the dubious ‘sit in the bath with the plug out’ to deny points to people with epilepsy. This seems to have come straight from DWP appeal writers, not the assessment guide or any case law.

How does one have a bath with the plug out?

Mike Hughes
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That’s not going to wash with tribunals!

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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What a shower.

Mike Hughes
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On a more serious note it is an appalling suggestion. Not least because the depth of water is largely irrelevant to the risk of drowning. If a person fits in a bath then the risk is as high if the bath is full as it is with a couple of centimetres left.

SamW
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Paul_Treloar_AgeUK - 04 July 2017 11:57 AM
Mr Finch - 04 July 2017 11:10 AM

‘Independent’ is a bit like ‘world-famous’ - the more you have to say it, the less appropriate it probably is.

Atos have just started using the dubious ‘sit in the bath with the plug out’ to deny points to people with epilepsy. This seems to have come straight from DWP appeal writers, not the assessment guide or any case law.

How does one have a bath with the plug out?

The only way I can see it making any sense is that they are suggesting that the person use a shower attachment and then sit in the bath under the shower? So in theory the water drains away and they are not so much at risk of falling. Or maybe they see people as having a kind of strip wash sat in the bath?

Can’t see tribunals accepting either as being to ‘a reasonable standard’ though. Plus I think that shower attachments to baths, whilst common, are by no means universal and so you’d think that would count as an aid/adaptation.

Returning to the general point - some of the PIP assessments I’ve been seeing recently have been really dreadful - almost getting back to the bad old days of ESA assessments where you are almost wondering if the report for somebody else has got mixed up with the clients one.

[ Edited: 4 Jul 2017 at 02:48 pm by SamW ]