Fear and loathing in medical assessments - damning Select Committee report

Guardian article - anyone who has had to apply for sickness benefits may find that the name [ATOS} triggers – according to one MP – a sense of “fear and loathing”.

On Tuesday, the Work and Pensions select committee is publishing a detailed and critical report on the way the Department for Work and Pensions policy on assessing capacity for work has been implemented, looking in part at the way Atos has carried out its contract to assess claimants. The committee launched its investigation this year after many complaints about the testing process.

During the work and pensions select committee hearings earlier this summer, MPs asked if Atos was penalised financially for inaccuracy. The company said it was paid per assessment, with no sanction if the decision was overturned on appeal. Anne Begg, Labour chair of the committee, responded: “That adds to the suspicion that you are a private company, you are driven by a profit motive, and the incentive is to get the assessments done, but not necessarily to get the assessments right.”

Benefits assessment firm causing ‘fear and loathing’ among claimants, says MP

“The company said it was paid per assessment”.

Can’t wait to see the report. Last year Chris Grayling wrote to a client of ours saying Atos was paid a flat rate £100m per year.

A client of mine worked for the Royal mail as a postman.
Apparently Atos provide medical services for them too.
An Atos medical officer retired my client on health grounds as he had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy (also known as adult sudden death syndrome) and the exertion of walking his round could kill him.
An ESA claim was made and apparently 4 months later he had his WCA. My client was delighted that coincidentally the same examiner who had him medically retired was the one conducting his WCA. His delight was short lived though when he was awarded 0 points.
you really couldnt make it up could you!

Won appeal on reg29.

Total waste of money.

It really is getting beyond a joke isn’t it. My best WCA failure so far this year is the client with a mental age of 7. She scored nil points. GP and SW provided very helpful letters and decision was eventually revised. It’s not the point though- the extent of the client’s learning difficulty should be glaringly apparent to anyone spending more than 5 minutes with her.

benefitsadviser - 25 July 2011 10:50 AM

A client of mine worked for the Royal mail as a postman.
Apparently Atos provide medical services for them too.
An Atos medical officer retired my client on health grounds as he had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy (also known as adult sudden death syndrome) and the exertion of walking his round could kill him.
An ESA claim was made and apparently 4 months later he had his WCA. My client was delighted that coincidentally the same examiner who had him medically retired was the one conducting his WCA. His delight was short lived though when he was awarded 0 points.
you really couldnt make it up could you!

Won appeal on reg29.

Total waste of money.

I had one exactly like this a few years ago.

The mental health assesors are totally inadequate. They cite things like rocking as part of the assesment.
A rocking motion is the side effect of very old and nowadays rarely used antipsychotic medications

At one point during the Atos saga, I thought the 1997 Freedom of Harassment Act might be useful in terms of daft repeating medicals, but of course, I should have known that the government of the day made sure that official harassment (i.e, by them or their contractors) was exempt. under s1(3)(b). http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/40/section/1

Someone must have known ESA was in the pipeline I reckon.

Hi Steve,

Not sure if your aware but the Work and Pensions Committee will publish its Sixth Report of Session 2010-12, ‘The role of incapacity benefit reassessment in helping claimants into employment’ (HC 1015), on Tuesday 26 July 2011 at 00:01am.

It’s an embargoed release;- why do they have to put them out in the early hours I wonder?

You may be interested in an article I’m running on the Mylegal site, it’s called ‘- The Welfare Reform ‘Car Crash’; - there’s a bit on it about the ATOS assessments.  I’m writing to the surgeries in our area to see wht their views on the LCFWA’s are because all I’m seeing are deeply unhappy clients and tales of doctor’s being increasingly infuriated at how their medical opinion seems to count for nothing.

The sixth paper I refer to above will also be posted on here..

http://mylegal.org.uk/index.cgi?action=display&board=frontline&thread=405&page=1

If you have got anything you’d like to contribute please let me know?  May be post it on here and I’ll copy it over and provide a link to it?

You may also be interested in these posts about this thorny subject:

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/1681/

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/1603/  - I’m not at all certain they’ve got the ESA conversion process right; - I’m hoping to take one of these cases to the UT as soon as I can.

We’re running another ‘Community Advice Day’ at Totnes next Tuesday from 10 to 3 at the Mansion House, I’m kick-starting the day with a short bit on the effects the welfare reforms will have on people, spread the word if you can think of anyone who would like to attend?

Totally agree with many of the posts on here regarding these assessments.

Some of the cases I’ve seen of late absolutely defy any form of compassion or indeed logic.  Only last week I saw a young girl in her early twenties who was very obviously and severely disabled with a congenital ‘learning difficulty’, she was accompanied with her mum who cares for her.  It was obvious from the moment she came walking into the room that she had a serious limitation.

Other cases include a chap in his thirties who at the time of the assessment was on the waiting list for major surgery.  He had two conditions requiring surgery, the less serious being a hiatus hernia - the more serious being a diaphragmatic hernia.  The poor bloke couldn’t push an empty shopping trolley round the supermarket without severe abdominal pain - including nausea.  When he went to the assessment he didn’t know the name of his more serious condition and assumed the HCP ‘would have all the notes’.  The submission only mentions the hiatus hernia as when he went to describe his other condition, the HCP couldn’t find it on the LIMA Logic system.  How on earth he was found to have no limitation is well and truly beyond me.  He went on to tell me that the surgery involved 6 hours of trying to resite his left sided abdominal organs which had herniated into his upper chest causing many serious symptoms.  The operation brought about infection related problems and required a further 8 hour emergency op after an internal rupture.  It was only after a month in hospital that he was released and subsequently readmiited to carry out gall stone treatment and finanlly to correct his hiatus hernia.  The danger is that some people are going to take the word of the HCP over that of their doctor and actually think they are well enough to resume normal activities.

Other cases have included a young man with long term schizophrenia who experienced hallucinations so real that he would call the Police in the early hours in the very real belief that his living room and around the outside of his house was ‘littered with dead bodies’.  Sadly his problems even extended to a belief that he had actually stopped the moon in orbit.  After the HCP said there was nothing wrong with him (following a 22 minute examination when he may just have come accross as ‘normal’) he started to think his clinician’s were conspiring to poison him and as a result of his paranoia, he promptly stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication; - his condition got much worse.

These are cases which we’re seeing on a daily basis, it’s an utter disgrace.

Thanks Nick…...Shall be reading the Select Committee report and your links with great interest tonight. I think the ending of contributory ESA (except for support group) after 12 months - from next April - could be a bit of a tipping point for the politicians, coming on top of the Atos issues.

Just had a quick look. Like the bit about the DWP’s use of press releases:

“but the Government should take great care with the language it itself uses and take all possible steps to ensure that context is provided when information about IB claimants found fit for work is released, so that unhelpful and inaccurate stories can be shown to have no basis”.

I can only agree with the points about the inadequacies of the examination, especially in relation to mental health issues. Over the last couple of months I have been to two of the local Community Mental Health teams to give a short talk on the ESA ‘medical ’ in relation to MH issues and to encourage CPNs etc to go to the medical with their patient if they can and to write reports to be enclosed with the ESA 50 in the hope of forestalling the medical in cases where it is not appropriate. I have also provided a handout with the old and new MH descriptors and some general advice about what medical evidence should consider and its importance.

It is too early to say if this has had any measurable effect but both the CMHTs I have been to seem quite positive about it (some of them were already going to medicals and writing letters). If anyone wants a copy of the handout please email me at   .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

work and pensions committee report now published -

The role of incapacity benefit reassessment in helping claimants into employment

rightsnet news story to follow…

see rightsnet news story -

Incapacity benefit reassessment process causing fear and anxiety amongst vulnerable people, say MPs

cheers ros

Media coverage of the reassessment is often irresponsible and inaccurate and we deprecate the pejorative language which some sections of the press use when referring to benefit claimants. Portraying the reassessment of incapacity benefit claimants as some sort of scheme to “weed out benefit cheats” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Government’s objectives. It is widely accepted that the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) as introduced in 2008 was flawed. This has been borne out by the high number of appeals and the high success rate of appellants. It was also reflected in the amount of evidence from individuals which expressed grievances with the way they were treated during the process and the accuracy of the outcome.

Pulling no punches there with their assessment of how the media are reporting this - of course, Grayling will respond by saying that he doesn’t control the media and can’t stop them publishing what they like.

Pete C - 26 July 2011 08:00 AM

I can only agree with the points about the inadequacies of the examination, especially in relation to mental health issues. Over the last couple of months I have been to two of the local Community Mental Health teams to give a short talk on the ESA ‘medical ’ in relation to MH issues and to encourage CPNs etc to go to the medical with their patient if they can and to write reports to be enclosed with the ESA 50 in the hope of forestalling the medical in cases where it is not appropriate. I have also provided a handout with the old and new MH descriptors and some general advice about what medical evidence should consider and its importance.

We always try and send evidence that reg37(2)(b) is satisfied with the ESA50.
Guess what, the client’s always get sent for a medical when the overwhelming evidence is that they should be in the support group.
God only knows what muppets they employ at Atos, whatever happened to scrutiny? Some pass the medical, some don’t, some go into the support group some go into the work related activity group. Those who go into the WRA group don’t know they should be in the support group.
The whole thing is a mess, in my considered opinion.

hi -

see rightsnet news story about new wca stats -

63 per cent of completed WCA assessments find claimant ‘fit for work’

also dwp press release on those stats -

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2011/jul-2011/dwp086-11.shtml

cheers ros