reports from doctors etc for ESA

Hi
I am a bit puzzled as to who asks for these. When I completed the ESA50 I assumed that the DWP asked for names and contact details because they asked for any reports direct. Now I have received my letter for F2F with ATOS I am not sure.

I don't want to bother my doctors for these if I don;t have to, and if it is not usual. Whose responsibility is it to obtain reports and at what stage?

thanks

LizP wrote: Hi
I am a bit puzzled as to who asks for these. When I completed the ESA50 I assumed that the DWP asked for names and contact details because they asked for any reports direct. Now I have received my letter for F2F with ATOS I am not sure.

I don't want to bother my doctors for these if I don;t have to, and if it is not usual. Whose responsibility is it to obtain reports and at what stage?

thanks

Hi LP,

Welcome to Benefits and Work

We always advise members to obtain their own medical evidence and send copies of it along with the ESA50.

If you did not use our ESA Claims Guides to fill in the ESA50, you may wish to read through them now :

ESA Claims Guides

Neither the DWP nor ATOS are under any legal obligation to gain medical evidence from your G.P. or any other treating HCP.

With ESA, they only contact a claimant's G.P. in less than 25% of all cases, they do so by issuing an : ESA 113 Questionnaire.

See also :

G.P.’s Completing Medical Reports for DWP

You may be able to obtain a letter of support from your G.P., but they are not contractually obliged to provide such letters/reports of support for their patients.

If they do, there can be a charge.

Another route would be to make a Subject Access Request to your G.P. reception for copy of your records, a similar request can be made to any hospitals that have provided treatment/clinics.

Requesting your medical records

Charging for medical records

The only problem with the above is that they have 40 calender days to comply.

You could try and gain supporting medical evidence before the F2F, and if you do, you could take copies of it with you to the assessment and hand it to the HCP.

You could contact ATOS and request that they rearrange the F2F appointment, you are only allowed to rearrange once :

Contact details are on the right under "WCA Customer Service:" on this page :

www.atoshealthcare.com/claimants/faq

This may give you extra time to obtain fresh evidence which you could then post on to ATOS to the same address as the ESA50 was sent to. You could also take copy to the F2F under this scenario.

Or you could attend the F2F, and post any fresh evidence on to ATOS as soon as you have it.

See : Sending Documents to the DWP or ATOS

&

ESAMedical – What to expect

If you are going to contact ATOS, I would do so by e-mail, if they then agree to rearrange the F2F you will have written confirmation of this, and not simply word of mouth.

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