Prognosis date letter

Department for Work and Pensions did not have the information requested.

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Please kindly provide either a sample of a letter or a letter template which would be given to an individual such as a healthcare professional who has requested you provide the prognosis date of his/her patient.

This may be requested by the healthcare professional, for instance, if they need to intensify care during a potentially stressful or even life threatening period for their patient.

Yours faithfully,

Lee Jefferson
Journalist.

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DWP Health Services Correspondence, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear L Jefferson,
 
Please see our response to your recent Freedom of Information request.
 
Yours sincerely
 
Correspondence Team
Contracted Health and Employment Services
 

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Dear DWP Health Services Correspondence,

Thank you for your clarification request.

It is our understanding that the authority does not hold any record of when the Work Capability Assessment date is and is therefore, unable to warn the people treating their patient (who is your claimant) in advance of the Work Capability Assessment date. This would be in case they need to intensify care during what may be a potentially stressful or even life-threatening period for their patient.

If this is not the case, we would certainly deeply appreciate a sample of a letter or a letter template which would be given to an individual such as a healthcare professional who has requested you to provide the next Work Capability Assessment date of his/her or her patient and that would complete this request in full.

Failing that, if it is true the authority does not hold the date of the next Work Capability Assessment, then for our purposes the next-best thing is a sample of a letter or a letter template holding the 'prognosis date'.

Please find below additional background information and let us know if any further clarification is needed. We appreciate your time.

The authority previously informed the Information Commissioner (for their case ref FS50687258):
"The next WCA date is calculated from the last date of assessment and set automatically by JSAPS at least two months before the prognosis date. We refer to the review date as a prognosis date, and this is recorded digitally on DWP systems."

Subsequently, on DWP FoI ref 249 dated 2nd February 2018 the authority states: "The prognosis date is initially set by the Healthcare Professional and will vary from case to case. The prognosis is usually set at 3, 6, 12, 24 or 36 months. The exception is an individual in the severe conditions group where no future date is required.

Therefore depending on the prognosis date the calculation will differ:

For the prognosis periods 6 – 36 months the calculation is:
Date of Assessment + N months (where N represents the number of months recommended by the Healthcare Professional)

For the prognosis period of 3 months the calculation is:
Date of Decision + N Months (where N represents the number of months recommended by the Healthcare Professional).

The 3 month prognosis date calculation is different as the start of the re-assessment process is triggered 3 months in advance of the next assessment and therefore this prevents the new date being set
immediately and before the decision has been made.

For this calculation a month is measured in calendar days."

Source: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/4...

Yours sincerely,

Lee Jefferson

S. Gwilliam left an annotation ()

You may be interested in this recent reply to a FoI, in particular the MGP1 example form.
This form is filled in by DWP staff when a claimant is migrated from a legacy benefit (eg. ESA) to Universal Credit.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/i...

Part 4 of that form has a section about previous WCA decisions to be filled in, which includes the "Date of next referral".

This clearly indicates that the DWP do in fact hold this information.

Of course this is the referral date for reassessment and not the actual date of the WCA, that will depend on workloads at CHDA.
(It's 5 months since I was last referred, 4 months since I sent an ESA50, no sign of a WCA appointment yet).

DWP Health Services Correspondence, Department for Work and Pensions

1 Attachment

Dear L Jefferson,
 
Please see our response to your recent Freedom of Information request.
 
Yours sincerely
 
Correspondence Team
Contracted Health and Employment Services
 

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Dear DWP Health Services Correspondence,

Ref: FOI 834

Thank you for your response. We're disappointed to learn the DWP is not interested in the well-being of patients.

On the subject of sending letters of invite for 'fit to work assessment'. To be helpful, we can advise the contractor used depends on the patient location. It's mainly Maximus who for this process call themselves Health Assessment Advisory Service. In some areas however it is Capita.

It would be inaccurate to suggest contractor knowledge of who to send letters of invite for 'fit to work assessment' comes from a crystal ball type process with no involvement from the DWP.

Yours sincerely,

Lee Jefferson

Lee Jefferson left an annotation ()

Following DWP's response we have submitted a new request https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...