When (if at all) does a Heath Care Professional read PIP2 form in its entirety?

worried33

ilovecats said:

Also, from my understanding, on the rare occasions where odd scores have been given at tribunal (1F for epilepsy was given to me as a caselaw example on a different thread), this tends to have little impact on future assessments because this would have been awarded in unusual/exceptional circumstances and the majority of epileptics fit the 1C/1E descriptors.

Far better to get the application correct and nail the assessment than to worry about MR/Tribunal/Case law etc in advance. 

I appreciate your insight.

My issue with this approach is I have always considered it unfair.

Condition X must mean Y, but sometimes people may have condition X and dont fit into Y and then its a struggle to convince people of that, also what happens if you have no diagnosis, such a system that heavily relies on diagnosis to award a descriptors against non diagnosis heavily.

For this reason I would say face to face assessments are a good thing, as in theory this should reduce the tendancy to rely on diagnosis to award descriptors but what I dont know if is during face to face does diagnosis get disregarded (and they just look at symptons + evidence) or is diagnosis still heavily leaned upon.

There was/is a former ESA claimant who got a job at maximus, on her blog she reported she was going to push for claims to be solely 100% decided by diagnosis which scared the hell out of me, her reasoning was anyone without diagnosis cannot be that ill and it would kill all the fraud,  but to me categorising people only by their diagnosis has always been wrong.  You can have two different people with condition X who may lead entirely different lives because (a) they may be affected by it in different ways and (b) they getting different treatments/support.  For that reason automatically awarding descriptors is wrong as well I feel, as someone might have a condition that is seen as typically causing significant disabilities, but are actually only mildly affected then finding themselves with maximum descriptors.

Assessing people on their health always seems to be a shot in the dark, it took me 5 visits to a knee consultant to get my knee problems recognised, basically they needed to see me on one of my worst days to accept the problem, and that want even a benefit assessment.  I have never been one to deliberately exaggerate pain etc. tho and that may have been part of my problem in struggling to get diagnosis for things.  So when medical professionals see me face to face whether its for a benefit assessment or hospital appointment, how they see me is the true picture.  Ultimately it means they never see me at my worst, because at my worst I wouldnt be able to get to the appointment.

poppy123456

PIP isn't about a diagnosis, it's how those conditions affect your ability to carry out daily activity based on the PIP descriptors. Lots of people successfully claim PIP that don't have a diagnosis and my daughter was one of those. Enhanced for both parts on her first claim and this was before she had a diagnosis.

robt1066

Agree poppy. 

robt1066

@poppy123456 said ... "You have to wait until you've made 25 posts before you can send a PM.",  I now have made 25 posts. If I want to make a PM how do you go about doing so? 

buzzer

@robt1066 click your name and get to your profile, under the list of posts, discussions, etc there is a link to inbox, click this and you will see a new message button 

robt1066

OK, thx @buzzer . I will send you one to see if it works. 

sheZZa

@ilovecats
a friend of mine had her f2f with the same assessor as me about 9 months apart.  The assessor treated us both in the same rude, aggressive manner.   She certainly didn’t read any evidence that we both sent in. We both have a disability that the assessor admitted she’d never heard of let alone knew anything about. I have three other debilitating illnesses that she doesn’t have but our reports were virtually identical. We certainly do not believe that it was not a tick box exercise. She applied for a mr and was successful and I am just starting the process.

sheZZa

@ilovecats
the ha wrote that we both looked well nourished. She’s overweight and I’m average. I thought people shouldn’t judge by appearances. We were both examined and could manage all the exercises when neither of us could and neither of us were tested. As far as I’m concerned one form fits all and nothing is tailored to the individual. 

Adrian_Scope

robt1066 said:

OK, thx @buzzer . I will send you one to see if it works. 

Did you manage to get it sorted @robt1066?