A new company given the contract to assess disabled people for a sickness benefit has told the BBC it will do one million assessments this year.
Maximus is being paid ?595m over three years to carry out work capability assessments for people applying for employment and support allowance.
The Department of Work and Pensions cut short a contract with Atos last year after "significant quality failures".
Maximus is promising to clear a backlog of around 600,000 claims.
It is also planning to reduce the time people wait for their results from at least 120 days to the recommended 90 days.
President of health services, Leslie Wolfe, told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme: "Part of what Atos didn't have was a [big] enough team to keep up with the wait times.
"That's one of our first priorities. We need to clear about one million [work capability assessment] claims this year.
"We'll actually need hundreds of new healthcare professionals across the UK in order to clear the backlog that's there, which is about 500,000-600,000 people, and also to keep up with the ongoing new volume of claims that customers are putting in."
So that's ?595 million exported from the UK to another foreign company. Did someone say "Won't that increase the deficit?" - never mind Dave doesn't mind I'm sure.
Not only that but Maximus already run the Employment and Work program
So win win for Maximus if they do their Jesus act and kick disabled people into their employment & work program, get paid twice. Wonder which they make the most profit on. If I were and MP I'd have bought shares in them ages ago
If I were a cynic I'd expect a lot of capability claims to fail in those regions where they run the employment work programme. Either way, money exported from the UK in the current climate is never a good thing.
Maximus is being paid ?595m over three years to carry out work capability assessments for people applying for employment and support allowance.
The Department of Work and Pensions cut short a contract with Atos last year after "significant quality failures".
Maximus is promising to clear a backlog of around 600,000 claims.
It is also planning to reduce the time people wait for their results from at least 120 days to the recommended 90 days.
President of health services, Leslie Wolfe, told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme: "Part of what Atos didn't have was a [big] enough team to keep up with the wait times.
"That's one of our first priorities. We need to clear about one million [work capability assessment] claims this year.
"We'll actually need hundreds of new healthcare professionals across the UK in order to clear the backlog that's there, which is about 500,000-600,000 people, and also to keep up with the ongoing new volume of claims that customers are putting in."
So that's ?595 million exported from the UK to another foreign company. Did someone say "Won't that increase the deficit?" - never mind Dave doesn't mind I'm sure.
Not only that but Maximus already run the Employment and Work program
So win win for Maximus if they do their Jesus act and kick disabled people into their employment & work program, get paid twice. Wonder which they make the most profit on. If I were and MP I'd have bought shares in them ages ago
If I were a cynic I'd expect a lot of capability claims to fail in those regions where they run the employment work programme. Either way, money exported from the UK in the current climate is never a good thing.
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