Page 43 - Reforming Benefits Decision-Making -(updated - August 2021)

Outsourcing of assessments

2.44 As explained above, health and disability assessments are outsourced to
private companies. DWP told us that it views this as “the most effective way
to obtain the best quality services to individuals, reduce costs to the
department and deliver improvement in value for money”. It said that the
“main driver [of outsourcing medical assessments] is the need to develop and
maintain the quality of services delivered to the public, while simultaneously
ensuring the best value of public funds”. However, the Working Party’s view
is that these objectives are not being met. As outlined above, there continue to
be numerous issues with the quality of assessments and repeated contract
extensions have resulted in limited competition. Further, as set out below the
outsourced providers continually fail to meet the quality targets within their
contracts.

2.45 The contracts with the assessment providers specify certain standards that
reports are required to meet and the DWP conducts audits on a random
sample of reports of each contractor every month to see if they are meeting
these standards.

Audit grades and targets

WCA the reports are graded either:

• A - key requirements are satisfied to the extent that the product fully
conforms to agreed standards;
• B – key requirements are adequately satisfied. However, the auditor
can specify elements that would quantifiably enhance the value of
the product; or
• C – key requirements are not satisfied.

The audit target specified in the contract is 75 per cent of reports at grade A
103
and 96 per cent of reports to be grades A or B.

103 In the WP Select Committee report the WCA target is stated as 70 per cent of reports at grade A and
95 per cent at either A or B grade. However, those targets increased in year 3 of the contract to 75 per

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