FOI 23340

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Freedom of Information Disclosure Log

The NHSBSA's responses to Freedom of Information requests. read more

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Open Government Licence 2.0 (United Kingdom) [Open Data]

FOI 23340

Request

Dear NHS Business Services Authority,

1) Which conditions, if any have been accepted as having a causal connection to the Covid 19 vaccines?

2) Does the VDPS have medical assessors in place to assess claims where a causal connection has been accepted? If so, how many?

3) How long on average is it expected for a claim to be assessed, once causation has been accepted, and all medical records/ evidence have been obtained ?

4) How many claims have you requested the necessary information?

5) Of the records requested regarding Covid 19 vaccine injuries, how many have you received, all the necessary evidence in order to assess the claim?

Response

Question 1

The COVID-19 vaccines are very new and the global effort to establish any potential causal relationship between the vaccines and their potential adverse effects is not straightforward and has taken time. As of yet, no causation has been identified in claims relating to Covid-19 vaccines.

Question 2

All claims are medically assessed by an independent, third-party medical assessor. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), as previous administrators of the VDPS, has a contract with an independent health assessment service to carry out a number of medical assessments, including those for a Vaccine Damage Payment.

As we have taken over the scheme from DWP, we’ve had to go out to tender for a contract of our own to cover VDPS medical assessments. This contract will include assessments of claims related to the COVID-19 vaccines.

We have an interim agreement in place with DWP so that non-COVID-19 related claims can continue to be assessed.

Regarding the number of assessors, we do not hold this information. This is flexed to meet the demand of the scheme and is managed by the supplier.

Question 3

Claims are assessed on a case by case basis, according to the criteria for the scheme. On average, a non-COVID-19 related claim can take around six months to process from the date we receive the claim form and request medical records. This timeframe varies from case to case, and we have scaled up a dedicated team of caseworkers to move the claims forward and update claimants on progress and we are unable to provide a more accurate timeframe at this time.

Question 4

As of 16 March, medical records have been requested for 239 active claims.

Question 5

As of 16 March, we have received all the necessary evidence for 12 claims.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-23340

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data please contact nhsbsa.foirequests@nhs.net ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

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The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2022” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.

Data and Resources

This dataset has no data

Additional Info

Field Value
Source
Contact Information Governance
Version 1.0
State active
Last Updated March 25, 2022, 14:17 (UTC)
Created March 25, 2022, 14:13 (UTC)