Should I record my ATOS medical?

ferien_uk2011

eskimo26 wrote: »

Who said anything about taking anything to your medical? ATOS do not take medical evidence its in bold on that letter they send you [despite my assessor asking for my medical leaflet that detailed side effects :mad:], unfortunately you were duped the assessment is based on LIMA and she no doubt inputted the information she favoured into the software from the report you provided. NEVER take anything to the medical you send it in to the relevant office addressed to the attention of the DM and posted recorded delivery.

The point is the medical is only one side of the evidence the DM considers the rest is what you send in, unfortunately they don't REQUEST the evidence so often the DM is left with the information on the ESA50 and the ATOS medical with which to make a decision. Conveniently this makes the ATOS medical much more decisive then originally intended, could be why the information is not requested but simply expected, at the end of the day they favour the result they want and its not in their interests to help you.

The letter stating not to send medical evidence to Atos refers to the 'fit notes' you get from your GP to keep your claim in payment until it has been assessed. They tell you not to send them to Atos as DWP need them to pay you.

You can send in other info with your ESA50. Atos look at the ESA50 and other info provided to decide whether you need a medical at all. There can be enough evidence in that to put you in the support group (unusual but it does happen) or WRAG (usually only if you are in hospital or receiving ongoing treatment - this outcome is referred to as 'deferred' and means you will be 'treated as having limited capability for work' until you are assessed fully).

Atos will sometimes send a form (ESA113) to your GP if they think the GP can provide enough information to make a their assessment on. Unfortunately most of the time the GPs don't return the form.

Or if you want a home visit, you can send a letter from your GP requesting this with the ESA50 so they make the decision straight away about whether to do a home visit rather than automatically referring you for an appointment at the medical centre.

Muttleythefrog

ferien_uk2011 wrote: »

The letter stating not to send medical evidence to Atos refers to the 'fit notes' you get from your GP to keep your claim in payment until it has been assessed. They tell you not to send them to Atos as DWP need them to pay you.

You can send in other info with your ESA50. Atos look at the ESA50 and other info provided to decide whether you need a medical at all.

I hope they've improved their letter accordingly especially since it seems to have been picked up as an issue (claimants were not sending in supporting medical evidence) in the report looking at how the WCA was working.

Just sifted through my papers to check what it said at the time... april 2010.

"Please only return the enclosed form ESA50 ESA QUESTIONNAIRE to the address at the top of this letter as soon as you can...

Medical certificate or any other documents must be sent directly to the office that deals with your claim. Do not enclose them with form ESA50."

(the underlining, capitalisation and bold are as in letter)

The letter failed to mention anything about supporting medical evidence and so did the accompanying DWP leaflet. Following phone calls to both DWP and ATOS I never got any clear advice on what to do with a CPN report I had to support my claim.. most said they'd never encountered the situation and didn't know what the procedure was (early days I suppose... presumably things have improved).. I decided to take the evidence to my medical as an agent at the DWP seemed to make sense in saying that if it was rejected then I could send it to them afterwards...lol. Shocking really.