ATOS loses ESA & PIP Assessment Contract

Brassedoff

Well, well, the ATOS rep will be a bit quiet. Following a Government check that found that 41% of the cases they checked were at least wrong, or had left out decision changing information, ATOS is to lose its monopoly/contract!

ATOS to lose ESA & PIP assessments.

Never mind. If they had done the job properly, they would still have the contract. Instead, we have a situation where people are facing real poverty in the 21st century as a result of their actions!

kaya

The pessimist in me is screaming " out of the frying pan Into the fire " and looking forward to ten years of complete incompetence and bad decisions from another target driven bunch of wallys

Derwent

I had my assessment for PIP more than 3 weeks ago and ATOS haven't even sent their report to the DWP yet. So, when they finally get around to submitting it I can no doubt look forward to it being badly written and full of inaccuracies. Its a wonderful system, no really.

schrodie

It's taken this government long enough to realise how poor and inhuman and poor value for money this company is. The cost to the taxpayer has been astronomical. The quicker sick and disabled people are freed from atos persecution the better!

Money_Saving_Scot

As someone who is on DLA and ESA(IR) and who has gone through these draconian :mad: medicals I am so overwhelming :j overjoyed that the CONDEM government has decided :beer: to dish out their own medical on the higher echelons of Atos and finally :j decided once and for all they are UNFIT FOR WORK!!! :rotfl:

tokenfield

schrodie wrote: »

It's taken this government long enough to realise how poor and inhuman and poor value for money this company is. The cost to the taxpayer has been astronomical. The quicker sick and disabled people are freed from atos persecution the better!

But who will replace them is what you should be asking.

Brassedoff

As the report says, smaller, localised provision. From the original government report, it says that breaking it into smaller areas will allow local FCA's to apply. Hopefully having real doctors at real health centres will see a more honest approach?

tokenfield

Brassedoff wrote: »

As the report says, smaller, localised provision. From the original government report, it says that breaking it into smaller areas will allow local FCA's to apply. Hopefully having real doctors at real health centres will see a more honest approach?

That's still no guarantee that you will get an assessment that is complete and correct in all respects.
Maybe these 'doctors' will be those that the NHS don't want to use? The ones that can't speak much English, and have a history of making wrong diagnoses? Maybe those that are no longer working for the 'out of hours service' and are as likely to kill you than cure you by giving the wrong medication or amount of medication?
Can't see genuine caring GP's being involved in this and good quality doctors that are employed by the NHS are in short supply anyhow.

What you have also to consider is that they will continue to use LiMa and the assessment is more about passing a descriptor than proving the inability to work.

rogerblack

Brassedoff wrote: »

As the report says, smaller, localised provision. From the original government report, it says that breaking it into smaller areas will allow local FCA's to apply. Hopefully having real doctors at real health centres will see a more honest approach?

Great.
Smaller more localised provision.
Wonderful.
Can we say 'postcode lottery' ?

Except they're not going to be paying more money.
Most ATOS staff are already fairly local.

There aren't enough doctors to go round, especially if the assumption is that they will take longer over the interview, and it requires significant training to do this in compliance with the law.

You cannot give people points because you believe they should have them in a fair and just society - or indeed that they shouldn't have points because they aren't 'really' disabled, though they technically qualify.

Having looked into how ATOS is doing things - at least a large fraction of the unfairness seems to be due to simple pressure of work.

What may appear as 'lying' on a report can be due to trying to do the almost impossible - you try to compose a sentence while listening critically to someone else to summarise accurately their words, then type it in, and not miss anything - all the while being alert for digressions that should be investigated.

It is to a degree a learned skill - but due to the way the brain works - this can never be perfect.

The only way I could think to help make the existing system fair and reliable would be to employ two people - one writes notes as they go along, and then the claimant is sent to wait while the report is written up immediately thereafter, with the second person going over a recording of the interview and the notes to check for errors, which if found are either corrected, or the claimant asked back in for a few questions.

Or to make the existing interviews much longer.

I question if simply getting a 'doctor' to see everyone helps.
Doctors vary.
A nurse with a wide experience of many specialties through her career is likely to be a better assessor than a cardiologist who's been in the same job for 30 years.
(Unless you happen to have a heart problem).

[Deleted User]

as roger says it may well become a postcode lottery,as atos keep the contract in some areas but lose it in others,and nothing will happen until this time next year

you have to assume that the govt doesnt want the dla to pip transfers from 2015 to be the same dogs breakfast that ib to esa has been so far

Brassedoff

I don't think that's the case anymore. Case law has been established, the beauty of case law is that is works both ways. As below shows. If you can have it one way, you will certainly find its only a matter of time before by applying the same argument.

Atos health professional who is a physiotherapist was of “no probative value whatsoever” where it concerned a claimant who had a mental, rather than physical, health condition.

The case involved a claimant who had been placed in the WRAG but had appealed to be placed in the support group. The claimant’s mental health conditions included depression and bouts of uncontrollable rage. The judge stated that:

“I can only express my surprise that in a case where the only issue was the mental health of the claimant and its effect in relation to the mental health descriptors, the report was prepared by a physiotherapist following a 15 minute interview. It is plainly important that questions of mental health should be assessed by a disability analyst with appropriate mental health qualifications if their opinion is to be of any evidential value. Even then tribunals should beware of placing too much weight on such reports, based as they are on a very short interview with a claimant and without access to medical records.“

Although the decision, which was highlighted on the Rightsnet discussion forum for welfare rights workers, relates to ESA there is no logical reason why similar arguments cannot be employed in relation to PIP, where a very similar points based system is in place. This could pose a massive problem for Atos whose successful bid for the PIP medical assessment contract stated that they would be using the following health professionals: