Disability benefit decision-makers have been left
without expert medical advice to call on for most of their cases, after the
outsourcing giant Atos Healthcare withdrew from large parts of a key
contract.
Doctors employed
by Atos used to advise Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) decision-makers on
the more difficult claims for disability living allowance (DLA) and attendance
allowance (AA). Atos has also been providing doctors to visit claimants in their
own homes to carry out full medical reports, again under a medical services
contract.
But Disability
News Service (DNS) has learned that the long-term contract to carry out this
work ran out three months ago, and since then Atos has been providing the
service on a month-by-month basis. Now the company has pulled out altogether
from most of the work, leaving decision-makers – the civil servants who decide
whether or not a disabled person will receive the benefit – without any expert
medical advice to call on.
An internal
bulletin to staff says that Atos Healthcare has been providing medical services
for DLA and AA claims for “many years” but that this support would now be on “a
revised basis”. The move is thought certain to lead to an increase in appeals
from people whose DLA and AA claims have been turned down, with decision-makers
forced to rely more on guesswork as they make decisions “on the balance of
probability based on available evidence at the time”.
DWP guidance is
being rewritten, with Atos doctors only available for claims from people with
terminal illness, and for those claims from disabled children being dealt with
at just one regional benefits centre.
Although personal
independence payment (PIP) has now replaced DLA for new working-age claims,
under-16s still have to claim DLA, and over-65s must claim AA to cover their
care needs. And due to delays in the PIP rollout process, existing DLA claimants
across London and the south of England, the north of England, and Scotland, are
still being assessed for DLA rather than PIP if they report a change in their
care or mobility needs, if their fixed-term award is about to expire, or if they
reach the age of 16,
A DWP spokesman
said: “It’s a revised service. Guidance has been provided to decision makers and
decisions made will be informed decisions based on information provided.” He
said that the withdrawal of the Atos doctors would not damage the quality of
decisions because decision-makers could use information “from a variety of
sources”, including the claim form, care plans, and reports from GPs and
consultants.
The internal memo
is just the latest evidence that problems for Atos – which has numerous
government contracts – are continuing to mount.
Despite DNS having
seen the bulletin, and DWP admitting that it was genuine, Atos has so far
refused to confirm that there have been any changes to its medical services
contract.
Campaigners
already believe that Atos has contributed to or even caused the deaths of
thousands of disabled people, because of the way its assessors have carried out
the much-criticised work capability assessment (WCA) on behalf of the
government. But last month, DNS learned that meetings between Atos and DWP civil
servants were taking place across the country because a recruitment crisis had
left the company with a severe shortage of doctors.
The public
spending watchdog is also investigating concerns about the award to Atos of at
least one of the contracts to assess those claiming PIP – following a DNS
investigation – as part of a major “value for money” study into the new benefit
and its implementation. And in July, the government announced that it was
bringing in new companies to join Atos in carrying out WCAs.
by John Pring, on the Disability News Service, 15th Nov 2013: http://disabilitynewsservice.com/2013/11/atos-move-leaves-dla-decision-makers-guessing/
