GPs charge disabled up to £130 to appeal fitness-to-work decisions Doctors are charging sick and disabled people up to £130 for medical evidence to appeal decisions about their fitness to work, The Independent has learnt. NHS GPs are telling patients they will only provide the necessary details to challenge controversial Work Capability Assessments if they pay. Others are refusing to help at all. Citizens Advice say in many areas GPs are helping with an appeal only if patients pay a fee of between £25 and £130. There are also reports from 15 of its centres that family surgeries are refusing to provide evidence at all. GPs who refuse to help – or charge increasingly high fees – argue that writing up medical evidence takes up time when they could be helping patients. But Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “Charging sick and disabled people more than £100 for medical evidence beggars belief. This process is clearly failing.” A lack of evidence from doctors will make it more difficult for people to navigate what experts say is an already “flawed” system. The Work Capability Assessment, which is currently conducted by the private company Atos Healthcare for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), has already been beset by criticism. More than 600,000 of the 1.8 million assessments carried out by Atos since 2009 have been the subject of an appeal, at a cost of £60m. Around a third of the appeals succeeded. After an investigation by the DWP, which found that two in five of Atos’s written reports were not fit for purpose, the company will no longer have a monopoly to carry out the assessments. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/gps-charge-disabled-up-to-130-to-appeal-fitnesstowork-decisions-8785041.html