Published: 25 February 2021

NEW MRO QUALIFYING CRITERIA AND RULES FOR DIRECT MEDICAL EXPERTS

The Ministry of Justice has today published details of the new supplementary qualifying criteria (QC) for medical reporting organisations (MROs) as well as specific rules for direct medical experts (DMEs) who opt to accept and are authorised by MedCo to accept, instructions from unrepresented claimants.  These can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/medco-qualifying-criteria-stakeholder-engagement-exercise

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/medco-new-rules-and-audit-process-for-direct-medical-experts

The rules for DMEs set out the requirements for those experts who choose to accept direct instructions from unrepresented claimants via the Official Injury Claim portal (OIC).

The new QC similarly set out additional criteria for those MROs who choose to deal directly with unrepresented claimants via the OIC portal.

MedCo will shortly be notifying its registered medical report providers of the process for registering to “opt-in” for this work.  It should be noted that all MROs and DMEs who register will be required to pass a MedCo audit prior to being made available for searches within the OIC portal.