ABOUT RESPIRATORY DISEASES

What is respiratory disease?

Respiratory disease is an injury resulting in a loss of full lung function which can produce a disability affecting physical performance. When dealing with Coal Health Claims the main respiratory disease is:
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

COPD

Claims can be made where COPD is attributable to a miner's occupation. Those conditions are:

I.        Chronic bronchitis
II.       Emphysema/small airways disease
III.      Exacerbation of asthma

THE MEDICAL ASSESSMENT PROCESS (MAP)

What?

In order to pay compensation for respiratory disease, the MAP was formulated to enable claimants to be assessed for level of lung disability.

The MAP is a sophisticated process and requires respiratory specialists to assess claimants. In order for a MAP to take place a claimant has to complete a claim questionnaire first and submit these to Capita the departments claim handlers.

Atos Origin, the company currently contracted to deliver the MAP, have a high number of respiratory specialists working on this scheme.

The Department continues to review the capacity levels, particularly in areas where there is a high concentration of claimants. Two Mobile Testing Units are being used and a copy of the itinerary can be found at http://www.dti.gov.uk/coalhealth/04.htm.

Why?

The compensation scheme is not simply a matter of paying compensation to those claimants who have worked for British Coal, but takes account of all the factors that may influence a claimant's ill health, such as smoking, and assesses what proportion of the disability is due to employment with British Coal. This allows us to settle each claim on an individual basis. In addition, the Scheme aims to compensate for disability suffered in the past and likely future development.

How?

The MAP is carried out in two stages.

Stage one: Lung function tests/Screening spirometry

These measure the loss of lung function but are not a clear indicator of the cause. Results allow the more seriously injured to be prioritised through the full MAP and also allow an expedited risk offer to be made, offering the claimant the choice between settling their claims or continuing through Stage two.

Stage two: further lung function tests

These better define the cause as well as the degree of any injury. A respiratory specialist then sees the claimant or in deceased cases, assesses the medical records.

The task is to identify any compensatable injury, determine the degree of disability, establish when that disability first appeared, and how it has progressed over time and into the future.

The results allow the claim handlers to calculate the compensation based on tariffs agreed with claimants' solicitors for different levels of disability.

Compensation is reduced if the claimant smoked (the judge ruled that smoking would always contribute to the level of disabling emphysema and specified how different degrees of smoking should be related to differing levels of mining dust - a complex calculation, year by year, performed using an agreed computer programme). Compensation is further reduced for any underground exposure that occurred before June 1954 (1949 in Scotland) the exposure date from which the judge ruled that British Coal  (BC) were negligent, and for dust exposure which the judge considered to be unavoidable, even if BC had used the most up-to-date dust suppression techniques.

ADDITIONAL ISSUES/ INFO

Interest

Until the date an offer is accepted, interest is paid on expedited payments from either 1 February 1999 or the date of receipt of the letter of claim, whichever is later. On offers, following full MAP, interest is payable from date of receipt of the letter of claim.

Coverage

The judgement applies only to England and Wales. Scottish law is different in several aspects. The Department has, however, put in place arrangements to ensure that fair and just levels of compensation are offered to miners and their widows in both jurisdictions. The basic arrangements are identical; although there are some variations to reflect differences in the way the law operates. In England and Wales, liability extends back to 1954. In Scotland, a cut-off date of 1949 was agreed.

Widows' claims

All widows who are able to show respiratory disease caused or contributed to their husband's death are able to claim a statutory bereavement award (or a loss of society award in Scotland).

Death in process

Inevitably some claimants have passed away since their claim was registered. However, the widow or estate can continue the claim. Where a former miner passes away after claims questionnaires and mandates, which authorise access to medical records, have been completed, truncated forms will need to be filled in as the claimant has effectively changed.

Risk Offers Scheme
As of September 2004, the projected end dates for the scheme were December 2009 for live claims and December 2011 for deceased.  Sir Michael Turner (the Judge who oversees the respiratory disease scheme), the Department and the Claimant’s Representatives’ agreed that this was unacceptable.

A series of court hearings occurred between October 2004 and December 2004 to propose and define a method of shortening the scheme.  The outcome was the Optional Risk Offer Scheme (OROS).

OROS is split into:

-        Live Optional Risk Offer Scheme (LOROS), for surviving mine workers; and

-        Deceased Optional Risk Offer Scheme (DOROS) for widows and estates.

 The first risk offers were issued on 28 February 2005 to surviving mine workers.  The Department’s claims handlers, Capita, issue 2,000 LOROS offers per week.  As of the 14 August, a total of 39,565 fast track offers have been made of which there have been 30,004 acceptances.  To date, the acceptance rate has exceeded 90% within the 56 days in which an offer is open.   

The 'go-live' date for widow and estate fast track offers is early September 2005.  Risk Offers for widows and estates will be confined to those claimants where there is no COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) on the death certificate and made on an 'opt-in' basis i.e. Capita (the claims handlers) will issue an Offer letter to each solicitor inviting eligible claimants to accept the deceased risk offer should they wish to.   

It is anticipated that up to 125,000 deceased claimants will be eligible for a DOROS.  Claimants will have until the end of February 2007 to accept a DOROS offer, failing which their claims will be processed under the normal medical assessment procedure (MAP).

For more information on the scheme, claimants should contact their solicitor or union.