§ Kevin BrennanTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to his answer of 25 February 2003,Official Report, column 496W, on medical services, what proportion of the audits carried out by medical services in the last five years were targeted audits carried out in relation to complaints from claimants about the quality of those medical reports; and what proportion of these targeted audits have been awarded grade C. [103118]
§ Mr. Nicholas BrownMedical Services management information does not allow for analysis of targeted audit that has arisen from complaints.
Targeted audit is used when a problem has been identified with a particular doctor, as a result of random audit, a complaint, a rework, or as a chance finding. It involves consideration of a number of reports completed by the doctor concerned, in order to gauge 173W the overall standard of his or her work. The percentage of C grades for targeted audit is therefore higher than for random audit.
The total number of targeted audits carried out between September 1998 and February 2003 is 9,495, of which 1,704 (17.9 per cent.) were C grades.