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How to claim expenses for your ESA Work Capability Assessment

When you attend an assessment centre for a Work Capability Assessment (WCA), Atos Healthcare will pay your travel expenses. We can reimburse the cost of travel from your current address to our assessment centre, and your return journey home.

When you arrive at the assessment centre the receptionist will be able to help you complete the claim form.

Claiming for different kinds of transport:

Public transportAtos-Healthcare-london-buses

You can claim back the cost of your journey by public transport.  Keep hold of any tickets to show the receptionist.

Car

If you choose to travel by car we can help pay for the fuel covering your journey.  The rate that we pay is set by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and is currently 25 pence per mile.

If you have to pay for your parking, we will reimburse the full cost

Taxis

Please contact Atos Healthcare if you can only travel to the consultation centre by taxi.  You may be able to claim taxi fares if you have a letter from a medical professional who is treating you Atos-Healthcare-rear-view-of-taxi-cabsexplaining why your condition means that you cannot travel by public transport.  Atos Healthcare cannot help you with any charges from your medical professional for providing the letter.

Please send the letter to Atos Healthcare and we will contact you to tell you if we can pay your taxi fares. For information about where to forward the letter for ESA assessments call 0800 2888777.

If you choose to travel to the centre by taxi without obtaining agreement from Atos Healthcare, we will reimburse the cost of public transport from your current address.  The assessing health care professional may be able to authorise reimbursement of taxi fares but only if they consider that you would have been unable to attend your appointment using public transport.

How we will pay

Expenses are paid into a bank account, so please bring details of these to your assessment. We do not have the facility to pay expenses in advance, in cash, or into a Post Office account.

You can find more information about the assessment on our website.

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Posted in ESA/WCA by Atos Healthcare on the 17th May 2013 |

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Employee wellbeing – don’t be blind to benefits of offering sight tests

Almost three quarters (71%) of employers believe company insurance premiums should be lowered if their employees have passed a full eye examination and eye test, according to research from opticians Specsavers.

Atos-Healthcare-eye-examinationsThe poll of 195 companies found employers would also be more likely to choose a particular insurance company or policy if eyesight tests were offered as part of the driving insurance policy.

Three quarters said that, if employees were offered a free full eye examination and sight test as part of a company driving insurance policy, this would be a deciding factor in choosing that insurance company, as long as the price was still competitive.

Wider employee benefits

The research highlights how apparently “soft” employee benefits such as eye-sight tests, which are often perceived as something “nice to have” rather than a “must have”, could potentially be used to “leverage” wider bottom-line benefits.

Equally importantly, in an increasingly mobile and flexible working environment, offering employees who are going out on the road access to sight tests is becoming an increasingly compelling “duty of care” issue.

The Health and Safety Executive has long made it clear that an employer’s duty of care extends to all work activities, including driving for work.Atos-Healthcare-driving-for-work

The fact then that Specsavers last year carried out research which suggested one in three drivers would fail an eyesight test is clearly concerning.

Specsavers has argued this shows it is important for employers to consider incorporating eye-care into their health and safety policy for employees who drive for work purposes

As Jim Lythgow, director of strategic alliances for Specsavers Corporate Eyecare, put it: “We believe that drivers who have good eyesight are safer than those who don’t. If insurance companies can encourage employers to test the eyesight of their staff that drive then this must be a good thing.”

Another factor to consider is the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. The Specsavers research does not specifically make a link with the act, which came into effect in 2008, but the act has raised the stakes when it comes to potential employer liability around health and safety failings, with driving for work one of the key issues highlighted by many employment law experts as something employers should be considering very carefully in this context.

Offering regular free or subsidised sight examinations or tests could therefore be seen as providing a valuable defence against potential litigation.

New regulations

Finally, a further issue is the fact the regulations in this area are evolving all the time.

In March, for example, the government outlined a series of changes to the minimum medical standards needed for driving in the UK, standards that came into effect this month.

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Posted in Occupational Health by Atos Healthcare on the 17th May 2013 |

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Employee wellbeing – health messages are getting through, probably

Smoking in Britain has more than halved and people are drinking on fewer nights of the week, latest official statistics have concluded.

Atos-Healthcare-quit-smoking-blogThe General Lifestyle Survey from the Office for National Statistics  has found 45% of adults smoked in 1974 compared with 20% in 2011.

Equally good news from the health perspective was the finding that the proportion of men who said they drank alcohol at least five days a week fell from 22% in 2005 to 16% in 2011, and from 13% to 9% for women.

Yet to argue that this shows decades of health promotion and education are finally paying off might well be over-optimistic.

Older drinkers

For starters, the ONS has also made the point that the older we get the more likely we are to be drinking regularly. 

Adults aged 45 and over were three times as likely as those aged under 45 to drink almost every day (13% compared with 4%) it found.

Then there’s the question: how much can we trust such statistics? No one, of course, is questioning the veracity of the ONS on this but, as recent research from University College, London, has argued we’re not exactly known for telling people the truth about how much we drink on a regular basis.

Its research compared alcohol sales figures with surveys of what people said they drank and – surprise, surprise – found a significant disparity.Atos-Healthcare-glass-of-wine

In fact, almost half of the alcohol sold was unaccounted for in the consumption figures given by drinkers.

Health promotion

What this means for employers, therefore, is that there is still likely to be value in pushing health promotion and education around alcohol consumption.

Obviously, as with most public health challenges, this is something that needs to be tackled from a much wider base than just the workplace – by our political leaders, health service, schools and society at large.

But just because headline figures are showing improvements in this area there is no reason to stop hammering home these important public health messages, with employers having the potential to be one of the key “channels” for getting this education across.

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Posted in Occupational Health by Atos Healthcare on the 14th May 2013 |

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Employee wellbeing – resistance to antibiotics is a threat to all of us

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the potential to cause untreatable infections poses “a catastrophic threat” to our population, and should be ranked alongside terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

In an “annual report” in February Professor Dame Sally Davies warned that the medics risked losing the ongoing battle against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and that we have seen in recent years a major increase in the number of bugs becoming resistant to antibiotics.

While a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past 30 years, there have been very few new antibiotics developed, opening the door to diseases to evolve and become resistant to existing drugs.

Atos-Healthcare-resistance-to-antibiotics-medicationEffect on operations and surgery

Should the trend continue it could have a major effect within 20 years on our ability to carry out minor surgery or routine operations, she warned.

At one level this is only a limited issue in the context of employee and occupational health. The report, for example, highlights that there will need to be better hygiene measures in place, especially within healthcare institutions, to prevent infections.

Constraints on, or increased dangers around, routine and minor surgery could, too, have a knock-on effect on the sort of fairly minor, fast-track procedures commonly used to get a worker back on his or her feet, often to sort out musculo-skeletal problems such as bad backs.

Attitudes to health

But the message here is by and large a much wider one – one of public health and societal attitudes to health – and in that context is simply one that employers will need to be aware of and embrace as much as anyone else.

Yes, there may be a need to encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest more time and money in the development of new antibiotics.Atos-Healthcare-resistance-to-antibiotics-washing-hands

But we are also, as a society, going to need to become more attuned to the limitations of antibiotics, ensuring they are only prescribed when needed and that, when they are prescribed, there is proper education and communication to ensure we do complete the course we have been given correctly.

Antibiotics revolutionised healthcare and our perceptions of illness when they were first developed in the Twentieth Century; it is vital we keep the “window of wellness” they created open for as long as possible.

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Posted in Occupational Health by Atos Healthcare on the 9th May 2013 |

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Employee healthcare – what first aid changes mean for employers

The Health and Safety Executive has published draft guidance to help employers understand proposed changes to workplace first aid due to come in from this October.

The government’s Lofstedt review recommended amending the 1981 Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations to remove some of the bureaucracy around first aid. This included removing the requirement for the HSE to approve the training and qualifications of appointed first-aid personnel.

Public consultationAtos-Healthcare-first-aid-kit

The HSE carried out a public consultation on this and is now working towards the regulations around this area changing from October. What it will mean for employers is that they will in principle have greater flexibility when it comes to choosing a training provider or in choosing the first aid training that is most appropriate to their workplace. However, the HSE has emphasised whatever provider is chosen will still be required to meet certain standards as set by HSE.

Legal duty of care

And, just as importantly, the relaxation of regulations in this area will not mean a watering down of the legal requirement for employers to ensure they have an adequate number of suitably trained first aiders (or appointed persons) in accordance with their first aid needs assessment.

The HSE has published three guidance documents to help employers manage this transition.

The first document is designed to help businesses make an assessment of the first aid requirements within their specific workplace and to put the necessary provisions and competent personnel in place.

The second document is designed to help businesses select an appropriate first aid training provider to deliver their training requirements within the new system.

Finally, the third document outlines a number of “first aid needs assessment scenarios” to help demonstrate the factors employers need to consider to ensure they fully understand their first aid needs and put in place appropriate arrangements in order to comply with the law.

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Posted in Occupational Health by Atos Healthcare on the 3rd May 2013 |

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