The so-called compensation culture has many costs associated which may not be readily apparent, but the scale of claims, now understood to be as high as nearly 1 million a year, means that any activities, fraudulent or genuine, associated with making a claim, now constitute a big and expensive market.

One such example, at the public expense, relates to GP time, since it is more or less a prerequisite of making a personal injury claim, to spend time at the GP , either obtaining treatment, but on a more cynical level, to create a paper evidential trail to support the claim.

Research from insurers LV has found the following quite startling facts :-

• 60% of GP’s asked said that they had noticed a considerable increase in what they considered tio be patients trying to asset a fake accident illness in the previous 2 years
• Over 50% have received approaches from accident claim companies asking if they will sell patient information
• LV calculate, based on their findings that the staggering number of nearly 30,000 hours of GP time is wasted each month dealing with bogus claims of patient injury or grossly exaggerated symptoms
• Over 90% of GP’s stated to the researchers that they have dealt with patients they believed to be making or exaggerating symptoms

These ara truly worrying statistics on many levels, not least indicating that as a society, getting away with what amounts to fraud, is seen as increasingly acceptable and normal.

What are your views on this ?

There has been much in the news recently about the so-called compensation culture and some of the worst instances of the view that fraudulent claims are out of control is the area of whiplash claims.

Certainly there is plenty of evidence that there are areas within our cities with extraordinarily high instances of these accidents and the trouble with whiplash is that it is a muscular injury primarily, so is hard to diagnose accurately and prognosis and symptoms can also be difficult and contentious.

The view that the system is out of control is only strengthened by a new survey of Doctors which indicates that a high proportion believe themselves that the system is being exploited. In particular, the survey found that :-

• 75%  of doctors and physios asked believe that claims for whiplash are prone to fraud.

• Nearly 90% of those asked consider that whiplash may not be the correct classification for road traffic injuries.

• Nearly 50% of those asked were of the view that there is still a tendency for a medical expert providing a report to feel pressure to put a slant on the report they produce.

What are your experiences ? Have you made a whiplash claim and feel that you are wrongly labeled as exaggerating your injury ? Do you think that there is a major issue re these claims ? Please join the debate.