ATOS Flouts Disability Discrimination Act - The Remedy

Thanks for the Link Click here to see BSS's post.

Concerning Benefits examination
The remedy is straightforward

First - it is essential to note the name and General Medical Council's (GMC) number of any doctor who assesses you for your benefits. All doctors are required to know their GMC number and to be able to provide it to any one who inquires. Request the doctor write down their full name and GMC number for you before consenting to an assessment

Second - request to see the report that the doctor writes prior to it being sent to the Benefits Agency. This again is your right and part of GMC's "Good Medical Practice" guidelines on confidentiality. You can directly request your report from ATOS.

If you disagree with the report, you must challenge it.

Third - if ATOS or other agency hold a file on you, you request to see a copy of all data held under Subject Access request, from the Data Protection Act - a simple letter requesting such data, together with a cheque for £10 is sufficient.

Fourth - if you have any concerns about the doctors behaviour in the assessment or competence in making the assessment, you immediately refer that doctor to the General Medical Council. Especially if you find evidence in the report of discrimination on the grounds of colour, race, gender, religion, disabilty, or sexual persuasion. Click here for the GMC website

I would not normally recommend referring doctors to the General Medical, however on this occasion these referrals are important

1 - It will discourage doctors from working for ATOS if they know that they will sooner or later be referred to the General Medical Council
2 - Since ATOS will not employ doctors who have been referred to the General Medical Council, this will deplete their workforce
3 - Those doctors whose practice falls below the level of competence expected of a reasonable medical practitioner will have to improve their standards if they are to continue practising medicine.
4 - Finally, it may make ATOS think twice before discriminating against disabled doctors in this way - which would be nice.

ATOS Flouts Disability Discrimination Act

ATOS flouts Disability Discrimination Act - yes we know that, but how?

ATOS demands that their 60,000 pound salaries go only to healthy doctors! that is doctors who are free of General Medical Council Conditions. Although there are other reasons for having conditions on your General Medical Council registration, a significant number of doctors with disabilities have conditions on the registration solely because of their Disability. Therefore "unconditional registration" excludes a significant number of disabled doctors!

This advertisement flouts Disability Discrimination Legislation. An employer cannot advertise for people without a disability, unless it materially affects their ability to do the job. Having a disability does not affect your ability to assess people for state benefits.

Nice to know that no one with a health problem is going to get a job assessing people with health problems.

Why Now? Doctors.net.uk DNUK and Doctors Behaving Badly

Last week a crowd of doctors from Doctors.net.uk started a unpleasant game of "Space Invaders" attacking me and my blog.

Doctors.net.uk (DNUK) is a private forum for doctors. You have to be a registered medical practitioner to join.

Within the forum doctors are allowed to post either under their own names or under closed profiles, where their identities are known to only the forum moderators. Posts are voted on, much like the Comment is Free section of the Guardian website. This leads doctors to compete for votes in order to get a "Top Quality Post". A Top Quality Post (TQP) is any post in the top five voting for any given week. Competition for a TQP is fierce, TQPs get a link in the right hand margin of the forum drawing other doctors attention to them. At this stage, they immediately get more votes and the competition hots up.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that behaviour deteriorates. Doctors are a frustrated lot and by no means are they all bad people. Most people, like myself, set out on the medical path with strong ideals and a belief in human kindness and compassion. These beliefs have been trampled on by the system within which they find themselves. Doctors are largely held prisoner in a culture dominated by fear and greed, otherwise known as the NHS. Unsurprisingly many "go native" and support the target driven, performance indicated, management dominated hands that feed them.

Even when I was a member (I am now banned) I rarely went there. DNUK has, incidentally, interesting ways of ensuring that just about every doctor is a member. Every now and again I dropped in to check my email. Last week I noticed a TQP post labelled "Acute Psychosis Fun". It opened with a post from a popular and well known doctor giving a recognisable description of a patient with severe mania and received 118 votes. There were various comments until one doctor made a spectacularly puerile quip which last time I saw it had 340 votes and was a TQP

I objected and all hell broke loose. The abuse I personally received for spoiling their fun was spectacular. It ended after a week. A week in which I described the incident on Doctor Bloggs (Click) was banned from the forum, and was threatened with lawyers. After three days the thread was withdraw and after six days the moderators agreed to delete my data and posts, all discussion of me, my mental health and the book Mood Mapping presently on the forum and in the future.

How did this happen? Firstly, doctors believe that they can be as flippant with patient confidentiality as the Department of Health, Secondly, altough it is accepted that you no longer make jokes about coloured, disabled or gay patients and doctors, people with mental health problems have no such rights. Thirdly, doctors consider DNUK a safe place to vent their frustration, especially when posting from behind closed profiles. It is not safe, as I demonstrated. I broke their Terms and Conditions, discussed the forum outside DNUK and have been banned, but I am not the only hole in the sieve.

The General Medical Council (GMC) has close links with DNUK and it can reasonably be assumed that everything that goes on within that forum does so with the tacit acceptance and approval of the General Medical Council. I say that because the forum frequently publishes recognisable patient details without patient consent, and the GMC takes no action. Members of the GMC Council post on the forum. Although in fairness to the GMC, they have guidelines in place to prevent doctors stigmatising patients.

In addition, nurses are referred to as "noctors" and "clinical mistakes" that they might or might not make are gleefully recounted. There are many "hate threads" against nurses or any other group that might offend the DNUK collective. Each attempting to be more trite and vitriolic than the last in order to attract more votes.

How should this be resolved?

I believe that kettling frustrated doctors inside a closed forum, with closed profiles stops proper and mature debate of the numerous well justified topics that are raised within the Forum

Doctors need a forum where they can openly discuss their concerns and where such discussions lead to action, not further increase frustration.

Closed profiles give a false sense of security. If you say something, you should be prepared to stand by it or apologise. The General Medical Council has full access to all discussions in the DNUK. They may also request further details about any exchange on DNUK should they require them.

Doctors do not need to discuss issues behind closed doors. In a world where patients are sent letters in the post, detailing the spread of their cancer and their life expectancy, there is no excuse for doctors to hide from their public. Their public can take whatever doctors say and judge accordingly. Moreover, many doctors would be surprised how supportive the public are.