ATOS medical/home visit or transport advice please

deeplyblue

ellenstan wrote: »

Do not be fooled into thinking the DWP DM awards the points or makes the decisions it has been proven over and over again the Atos HCP with the aid of the LiMA computer awards the points ,in most cases the DWP DM just rubber stamps the Atos findings.
The whole system is corrupt most people will receive 0 points whatever there condition Atos do not care about your illness.
I have experienced two WCA medicals LoL in the last 12 months you have no chance in the first without experience ,the second is better when you know what to expect,it is solely a money saving thing,but Atos get their millions whatever the outcome.For experience see dwpexamination blog.

Yes, I appreciate that the information would be redundant, but I wanted to know if it is true that the DWP are supposed not to inform ATOS.

Something which managed to shock me - and the depths of the ATOS-Unum-DWP machine are places where I have looked - was when I discovered that the DWP were taking ATOS "Health Care Professionals" in twilight raids into the Tribunal Service's archives, so they could find out who was appealing and on what grounds. They were then sending recommendations up the line that some appeals could be avoided as they were almost certain to be approved - thereby saving the DWP the trouble of defending their case at a hearing.

They also (my sources say) have a policy of identifying some appeals which they label "frivolous" (or some such) and are thinking of creating a system to put in an appeal to the judge to dismiss such cases without any formal hearing. If it were true that the DWP were not supposed to communicate results to ATOS this would be even more of a scandal than it is.

Even as things stand, imagine what would happen if it were revealed that, at an employment tribunal, large employers were allowed to take tame "independent experts" through the files and tell the tribunals which ones to hear and which ones to dismiss.

The government clearly sees no reason not to do this sort of thing,

“Learning from a recent exercise whereby a joint team of Atos healthcare professionals, Decision Makers and Tribunals Service personnel reviewed cases awaiting Tribunal Hearing will also be cascaded and embedded nationally.”

All this without the appellant being informed.

I have complained to my MP that this is a clear violation of the terms of operation of an "independent" body. However, ever since I realised just how problematic it was going to be for the Tribunals Service to keep up with the inevitable wave of appeals resulting from the IB2ESA "migration", I have half expected this government to realise that the easiest thing to do would be to abolish the right of appeal.

Co-opting the Tribunals Service into the service of the DWP might well do the same thing but with fewer objections. You just get them into the habit of asking the DWP, "do you want to reconsider this without a hearing?" - dropping a hint that the appeal will go against them, and the numbers (and the costs) might embarrass the department. So the DWP knows in advance that they are going to lose.

Then the DWP says to the Tribunal, "This one's really trying it on, do you think we should apply to have it dismissed out of hand?" The Tribunal Service looks at it, agrees that this is a chancer who is not going to get anywhere under any reasonable tribunal. TS gives the nod, DWP asks for the case to be dismissed without a hearing and everyone's workload is reduced.

Then before you know where you are, the Tribunal Service is asking the DWP, "could you weed out the hopeless cases for us?" and the DWP decides who can or cannot go to appeal. ATOS, of course, has a health care professional along, who can assure the DWP that this or that medical condition is "not really scientific" (e.g. most obviously, M.E. aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Then DWP simply "suggests" that all CFS cases are to be dismissed without a formal hearing, and so notifies the Tribunal Service.

And thus the right of appeal is removed from that tier, and the DWP/ATOS work on abolishing the next tier - all in the name of "efficiency". At that point, someone notices that all the decisions are made by the ATOS software, rubber stamped by the DWP and waved away by the Tribunals Service. So why not just let the ATOS software sort it all out to start off with - it could even be in charge of the payments, to save unnecessary duplication of IT functions.

One more piece of large, inefficient government being replaced by an unaccountable (and therefore cheaper) private foreign company, with absolute power to decide who gets what and when and under what circumstances.

Outsourcing at its finest.

db