How many complaints regarding ESA/WCA assessments have you recieved?
Dear General Medical Council,
Can you tell me how many complaints you have recieved from claimants who have been upset by the manner of assessors assessing them for ESA/WCA assessments? And how have you reacted to these complaints?
Similarly how many complaints have you recieved relating to poor quality reports used to make benefit decision?
Yours faithfully,
Trudy Baddams
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Thank you
Information access team
General Medical Council
Email: [GMC request email]
Telephone: 0161 923 6365
Working with doctors Working for patients
The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.
Dear Ms Baddams,
Your information request - F19/9980/LG
Thank you for your email dated 10 February 2019.
How we will consider your request
We’re going to consider your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000 (FOIA). The FOIA gives us 20 working days to respond, but we’ll come
back to you as soon as we can.
Who to contact
Louise Gormley will be handling your request. If you have any questions
you can call her on 0161 923 6311 or email her at
[1][email address].
Yours sincerely
Loredana Cojan
Information Access Team Administrator
[2][email address]
0161 240 8189
General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW
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Our reference: 18/13828G/LG
Dear Ms Baddams
Thank you for your request for information relating to complaints we have
received about doctors carrying out EAS/WCA assessments. Your request has
been considered in accordance with the access provisions of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
I am unable to provide this information to you, as I am unable to
electronically capture complaints relating specifically to EAS/WCA
assessments. Our complaint categories include categories such as ‘Fail to
listen to patient’ , ‘Rudeness to patient’ , False misleading reporting
etc. Additionally there are complaints, closed at an early stage which
will not have been categorised into an allegation category. The only way
we could establish if complaints related to ESA/WCA assessments would be
to manually read through the complaint.
The exemption
Under the FOIA, the specific exemption which we believe applies is at
section 12. This states that we are not required to comply with a request
if we estimate that the cost of doing so would exceed the appropriate
limit.
In 2015 alone, we received over 9000 complaints. It would take
approximately 5 minutes to read one complaint, to read all 9,000 to check
if any related to ESA/WCA assessments would take approximately 750 hours.
Based on an hourly rate of £25 per hour (which is set by the Freedom of
Information [Fees and Appropriate Limit] Regulations 2004) this would cost
us significantly in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’ to process.
Your right to appeal
I am sorry I have been unable to provide the requested information. You
can appeal against this decision to Julian Graves, Information Access
Manager. If you want to appeal, please set out your reasons and email
[1][email address]
You can also appeal to the Information Commissioner, the regulator of the
FOIA – we can provide more details about this if you need them.
Kind regards
Louise
Louise Gormley
Information Access Officer
Resources and Quality Assurance Directorate
Direct Line: 0161 923 6311
Email: [2][email address]
Website: [3]www.gmc-uk.org
Address: Information Access Team
General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW
Working with doctors Working for patients
The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.
We work to defend the right to FOI for everyone
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