Atos Healthcare and Employment Support Allowance fraud.

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My partner has just received notification that she has "failed" her medical for ESA. ON receipt of the medical report we discovered that she had rated a ZERO points allowance in EVERY part of the medical assessment.

This has raised several questions, and subsequent googling has only increased yje questioning.

The assessments are carried out by Atos Healthcare, a private company which also does assessments for DLA and used to do Income Support as well. It has been suggested they have been contracted for 500 million pounds sterling to do this, after a shortage in regular GPs volunteering to carry out the assessments. Atos Healthcare may be an American insurance company. Can anyone verify if this is the case?

Atos Healthcare were reported (in 2006) as having deliberately altered and "corrected" questionaires from applicants for DLA so as to make them MORE capable than they actually are, and generally decrease their "disability" so as to lower their payments. This obviously fraudulent company were subsequently awarded the contracts to administer ESA medical assessments. Does anyone know of any information about this clearly fraudulent activity?

Numerous forums and threads across the net (such as the BBC Ouch forum) contain posts from people with disabilities who have been either blatantly mistreated by Atos "healthcare professionals" Does anyone have any information about such mistreatment by Atos?

The DWP themselves, under ESA guidelines, have stated that they can and do take the opinion of an "Atos Healthcare professional" above and beyond the opinions and diagnosis of GPs, consultants, and specialists (as has been the case with my partner.) Should this be the case? Should they consider the results of a ten to twenty minute interview against the professional opinions of specialists in the field, or people who may be long term familiar with the case..

There are rumours that bonuses are paid to Atos "doctors" for each "fail", and that DWP targets that REQUIRE the failing of a certain number of claims (roughly to a ratio of 4-1 in favour of "fails".) Does anyone know of any information that would confirm or deny this?

The British Medical Association states that Atos "doctors" have complained that they are the victim of what is euphemistically described as "vexatious complaints" when dealing with assessements where their decision has had a financial effect on the assessees. If there are enough complaints to merit such a mention, is there not the possibility of a case that certain assessees are justified in their complaints?


I am currently gathering evidence to present to, in no particular order: The DWP Appeals department, the DWP complaints department, Atos complaints department, the National Autistic Society, our local MPs, and the Minister for disabilities, and whomsoever else it might seem expediant to inform about this. Any help would be most appreciated from all angles. This is not something we are doing for our own benefit (though it may be of benefit) but something we are doing out of our concern that the whole ESA process is intrusive, fraudulent, unfair, and possibly even a form of disability discrimination. Throughout the whole process we have been treated shabbily, and this "professional" report is simply another insult from a system that appears dead set on mistreating the disabled and using them to "adjust" the employment figures so as to appear to be doing something about the current unemployment problems. We are, it seems, a soft target.

The ultimate irony is that both I and my partner are about to receive a Resource Allocation Sum, which will determine how much money the government will provide for our continued health and social care for the next year and subsequent years. This system of "personal budgets" replaces the earlier system of broad allocations. So whilst with one hand the government tries to empower us with this magnanimous "gift", the other hand drains our limited budget in day to day life. It seems that the government is unaware of this fact.

Having attended a previous ATOS assessment, and then having benefits stopped due to the pack of lies they logged, I audio-recorded the last assessment. Sure enough, the report that came back contradicted what I said.

They are liars, and I believe the government is entirely aware of what they're doing. Shaw Trust certainly is.

My thanks for your support.

Further to the OP: We appealed the decision, and it was taken for revision and refused revision, so it is now in official appeal. The revision people agreed that based on the information they had the doctors decision was correct.

We received a copy of the actual medical report and having read it discovered that the "health-care professional" patently and openly lied. From his first answer the whole report is a string of falsehoods and guesswork. For example, no mention was made of my partners officially diagnosed Dyspraxia, which is mentioned in her overall diagnosis of AS, and was mentioned repeatedly by all present at the interview. Dyspraxia ON ITS OWN can obviously affect a persons ability to work in many ways, yet it is not IN the report. There is NO MENTION in the report of the attendance by my partners registered social worker who was alao present and happens to be a fully qualified Aspergers Specialist Nurse... No copy was taken of the official diagnosis so of course the revision officer has never seen it. Clear and provable lies, witnessed by us all, have been recorded in this document.

Having studied the DWP regulations as they apply to ESA it has become clear that this "doctor" has failed to even folllow DWP guidelines, and has deliberately avoided certain clauses in order to improve his case. For example, a medical report from your GP MUST BY LAW be taken into consideration by decision makers. Our GP has told us that she has not been asked for a report, and in ESA cases has NEVER been asked first time round. In addition she pointed out that her first recourse in response would be to send hte CONSULTANTS REPORT to them.. ie the diagnosis they were shown in the first instance.

As it stands our legal representative and us are waiting for an appeal date, where we can reveal this evidence. In theory it is impossible for them to legally agree with the doctors decision, but given who we are dealing with, there is always dou

However this goes beyond just us. ATOS and the DWP are clearly working towards a goal of reducing the number of benefits claimants on disability benefits and placing as many people in work as they can. This they openly admit is there goal. And indeed helping people to find supported and meaningful employment is a laudable task, and I imagine in many cases by far the best course of action for the individual. Likewise there are inevitalby people on disability benefits who are scamming the system. This is a universal truth. The problem is that ATOS and the DWP are a) targetting a very yulnerable part of the population for savings by engaging in a vast cost-cutting excercise at the expense of the disabled, b) acting in direct contravention of the opinions and accumulated knowledge of the entire medical comunity, c)manipulating popular opinion against the disabled and d) manipulating, ignoring or attempting to change the law itself in order to manipulate figures that they themselves manipulated in the first place.

The disabled are a soft target by DWP standards. Many of us will not fight back, many of us do not know HOW. Poor adult services provided by this very government mean that many of us lack the help and support we need to exist day to day, never mind fight a complex legal battle. The whole process of dealing with the DWP (even when they arent forcing you off benefits) is stressful enough, but the sheer capricious nature of the DWP and the power they hold to arbitrarily destroy lives piles stress upon stress. Many of the people they are SUPPOSED TO BE TARGETTING were falsely placed upon sickness benefits by the government themselves in order to LOWER unemployment figures. The true fraudsters are by far sophisticated enough to manipulate the system as easily as they always have.. but the disabled are often either not sophisticated enough, or simply too honest, misled into believing that the TRUTH will be enough to support their claim. This is discrimination, clearly and obviously.

DWP regulations themselves have been crafted so as to state that the ATOS professional is the final word in medical opinion. This means that ANY OTHER opinion is secondary and can be disregarded. It goes without saying that this flies in the face of every part of the medical establishment, and undermines the very basis of modern medicine, especially given that the ATOS employees are CLEARLY AND PROVABLY not specialists in any disability, despite ATOS using the term "disability specialist." In effect this means that a government minister by proxy (a man who may have zero medical knowledge) is in a position to ignore ANY MEDICAL AUTHORITY IN THE WORLD....

Recent headlines have touted that 70% of sickness benefits claimants are LYING. This is based on ATOS healthcare figures for medical assessment failures. So in fact 70% of those on sickness benefits have failed the medical. This is clearly not the same as "lying.". Manipulating media statements like that is discriminating against the disabled as there has been no detailed explanation of how this figure was determined, nor has there been any statement about the number of APPEALS ongoing.

ESA regulations are available for download under the freedom of information act. These regulations are liberally peppered with "rules" which increase the likelihood that even the severely disabled can be considered jobworthy. Both our own experience and that of others verifies that ATOS have again and again contravened even their own regulations and guidelines.

All of this is unacceptable. This is "Autism Speaks" for the UK, but covering EVERYONE with a disabilty or even an injury, and sponsored by central government itself. It is vital that we do not allow our government to "cure" us at will, simply to increase the labourforce and lower their own costs. All of this should be stopped, so that the disabled can receive the help and support they require, instead of being victimised and abused simply to save face for a corrupt system and a corrupt government. We are not statistics and we are not figures. We are people, and we deserve the right to live as such without being judged by those not fit to judge us.

I can see from my reading of a number of websites...not specifically to do with your situation, but the trend of getting people on a disability benefit and switching them to unemployment benefits, worldwide.

Here they are doing it by halving the hours that someone has the capacity to work for, so a recipient is only eligible if they have a work capacity of less than 15 hours per week (plus other impairment ratings). In the past it was less than 30 hours per week.

The people that are in between are getting either a Sickness Allowance and a Health Care Card (which doesn't give quite the same amount of concessions) or get Newstart (Unemployment) and a Pension card (both payments are $100 less per fortnight).

Then there is the possibility of being sent to a disability employment agency who get paid money to provide various time wasting appointments and courses. The odd person will be lucky to get something that does suit.

The medical side of things here, is hit and miss, you can randomly get a good assessor or a bad one, and they range from employment agencies to other vocational assessors, who may or may not have a medical background. You might get someone with a physiotherapy background assessing a mental health case for example.

Its worth noting that this ninitiative to drive the disabled to work has occurred in the middle of a recession where people who want to work, who have exemplary work records, a full CV, and NO special requirements are incapable of finding work...

it connects with the workfare (sp?) 'work for your benefits' program, whereby benefit claimants are forced to do a full weeks labour for well below the minimum wage or starve.

Creating a pool of effective slave labour in this way and then making it available to favored cooporations is even more insidious than it looks on the surface; the businesses who get 'employees' for free wont be making those menial vacancies available to the future job market. Therefore incresingly large sections of the population who would otherwise be on minumum wage are cooerced into doing their old jobs for far less. What worries me further is smaller independant businesses who cant, or wont be party to this scheme will be totally unable to compete and fall into bankruptcy... creating new workfare slaves. drip,drip,drip.. multi-nationals eventually controlling everything, cash replaced completely by electronic credit.. touches of 1984, dickensian workhouse ethos and modern china with some nasty technological surprises thrown in no doubt

When i think about it all in future terms like this, its seems totally hopeless. But it can still be stopped by driven and passionate people focusing in on elements in the here and now, like your doing. Huge props for standing up to them both of you!

Im not diagnosed or medicated so im going to be screwed when my re-assessment come round!

Just to give people an idea of how fast the ESA/DWP works... yesterday we recieved a date for the tribunal, which happens to be in the middle of next month. WE also received a (very long) letter from the diagnoising neurologist explaining exactly why she thinks the DWP are being foolish. It was accompanied by another letter which vaguely conceded that we might sort of have a point possibly from the DWP. The best point they conceded is that the "doctor" they provided admits that he talks too fast, and may be hard to understand... Its a start.

Further to this: Tribunal occured friday just gone. Result: Win for common sense and reality. IE the Tribunal decided that my partner is in fact eligible to be on ESA (in the limited activity for work group) based on her original diagnosis and a few confirming questions about activities that appeared (in the ATOS report) to contradict that diagnosis. So basically the same information that was presented to the ATOS healthcare professional in the first place, ten months ago, and some e;aboration that would have been given had ATOS bothered to ask such questions. Notably, such questions DO appear in the ESA medical report as laid out by the DWP for ATOS to ask.. just nobody bothered to actually ask them, just presumed answers...

How many more of these farcical tribunals have to take place before something is done to stop the most vulnerable sector of society (after children) being used as a scapegoat for deplorable policy? How many more disabled people will have to go through month after month of stress and anxiety because ATOS have decided not to listen to answers, or even ask the right questions? Who exactly is going to take up this matter with our benevolent masters on behalf of the genuinely disabled?
BY all accounts the ESA applications were concocted with the collaboration of the National Autistic Society, and look how far that got us, the autistic... Maybe another group that is better able to represent its chosen disability will make a stand?

Worse still, its been written in the press that any new Conservative government would immediately initiate a review of ALL ESA claimants cases.. so inevitably this means the same vulnerable sector of society being hauled over the hot coals AGAIN.

If this isnt discrimination, I dont know what is...

I am currently writing a 6000 word assignment on the impact the ESA medical and tribunal process has on people with ASC's. I have helped to completed 17 limited work capacity forms, attended 21 medicals as a social interpreter /advocate and represented 9 people at first tier tribunals 8 of which we managed to score enough points. The nineth case we lost because the so called independent legal person didn't get AS and the GP was so old he had little understanding ( I think he was retired). But the good news is we just filled in new applications and guess what he got both his ESA and DLA . He is now working for himself as the ESA process was too much trouble but he has still got his DLA ( It was a joint appeal).

I am hoping as an AS person I will be able to show how tokenistic the process is and potentially discriminatory. Although it has been pointed out to me that AS doesn't necessary equate to been seen as disability unless you can prove it substantially effects on a daily basis . This society just doesn't get us... Some of the comments doctors have written on reports are laughable... if it wasn't so sad.

Please any positive or negative points may help me in expanding my argument. I am hoping to see if have a case for a class action against Atos for institution practice that leads to discrimination by tokenism, lack of knowledge and understanding. That anticipatory measures and reasonable adjustments are not enough (if any) to prevent unfair disadvantage towards people with ASC's. So the DWP have potential supported discrimination.

Also people when you go for the medical please state and ask for it to be written down that you disagree with this process and feel that you are sterotyped and misunderstood. As the practitioners have to state that a per centage of people are happy with the process and them!! !! !

Please can you respond ASAP as I have to write my assignment in the next 4 days. I always struggle to get started and leave myself under incredible pressure.... I have obviously done quite alot of research but I am interested in finding out your thoughts.

Thank you

Hi,

Thanks very much for this comment. It help me to think about my ideals.

Tks again and pls keep posting.