Medical Assessments on behalf of the D.W.P.

A few months ago my husband, who has a severe and debilitating and clinically diagnosed medical condition, had a reassessment for the Personal Independence Payment, P.I.P., by a company called Capita (there are others). My husbands condition has worsened over the last few years, yet the 'Health Professional' who visited us made no attempt whatsoever to examine my husband (I will go into more details later) and a few weeks later , he was stripped of all entitlement to the P.I.P.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I haven't, but I have seen other similar complaints. I'm surprised that NHS doctors seem to have meekly accepted this questioning of their competence. Every time Capita or other companies do this they are contradicting the patient's own doctors.

I hope you have spoken to your usual doctors and have lodged an appeal?

Grom wrote:I haven't, but I have seen other similar complaints. I'm surprised that NHS doctors seem to have meekly accepted this questioning of their competence. Every time Capita or other companies do this they are contradicting the patient's own doctors.

I hope you have spoken to your usual doctors and have lodged an appeal?

Thank you Grom for replying. My husband has lodged an appeal and is set for a Tribunal Hearing.This will be the second time he has had to go to one.I have read some dreadful stories of what has happened to people with companies like Capita. They are told to fail 4 out of every 5 medical assessments, and apparently the DWP on government instructions are trying to remove as many people as they can from the P.I.P.
Capita's 'health professionals' receives hefty obonuses for removing people from entitlement to P.I.P.
I have heard that Capita will not have their contract renewed due to the behaviour of their assessors. By the way, Capita have also lost their contract with the M.O.D. from 2019, for providing the MOD infrastructure.

My daughter worked for them for a while; her job was dealing with Local Council callers. At first she was told that client satisfaction, not speed, was what they wanted (her background is customer care). That gradually changed and they were being forced to cut their calls short to fit more and more in. They were micro-managed and hounded if their breaks were a minute or so over the time allocated. She was then unable to establish rapport with the callers and it became quite an unpleasant experience so she left.

It's a common problem when work is outsourced. Margins are slim so every last drop of work has to be extracted from staff to make a profit.

I hope your husband wins his case. It's a terrible thing to do in my opinion; causing such upset and worry to already sick people. There are those who 'play the system' but this isn't an acceptable way of dealing with that imo.

It became part of the unspoken policy that all claimants were to be pulled off sick benefit, and forced to go before a panel. we all know there are people playing the system, but to treat everyone like criminals is unforgivable. The NHS teams work on behalf of the various governemnt departments they are merely puppets to the council, the social work, police, and DWP. your medical information is being handed over under the guise of 'helping you'. but is being actually being used against you in some instances. There is NO partnerships in community partnerships- the social work rule the NHS- all social workers have taken over all top medical /clinical staff jobs. and the administrators are being micro managed into the sick bay! I have seen this with my own eyes. but the good news is the Government will tell you all nurses are angels and social workers to a great job... yeah.