NHS has claimed that the GPs in UK are wasting the valuable time of the organisation by attending the fraudster patients with false whiplash insurance claims. This study has been conducted by an insurance company LV. The outcomes of the study reveal that the doctors believe that they are attending the people, who are simulating or amplifying their injuries in order to get compensated after a car accident. This problem is getting worse with every passing day and a 43 per cent of GPs saying that these kind of cases are coming very frequently and they have seen a rise of 26 per cent in past three years from 2012 to date.
The research shows that doctors are attending 116,000 fake cases every month and these cases are taking up more than one million surgery hours a year. It is a very serious issue, where these fake fraudsters are taking genuine and valuable appointments away from real patients. They end up wasting additional surgery time, when surgery have to deal with law firms and massive paper works for the insurance companies.
While seeing patients with fake claims, 52 per cent of doctors claim that they are facing pressure to agreeing with patients about their conditions even when their conditions are unclear. LV’s claims director, Martin Milliner comments, “Verifying personal injury claims take up a lot of time and places unnecessary pressure on our already stretched health service. The cost of dealing with fraudulent claims not only pushes up the cost of car insurance for honest motorists, but it also hurts the public purse.”
However, insurers are working in collaboration with government officials and have made progress in the action against these fraudsters. On other hand, fraudsters are trying new tactics to beat the system to get compensation for which they are not entitled. The regulatory authorities must deal with these fraudsters very strictly to support the genuine patients to get early appointments.
