News story

Civil news: revised checklists to help avoid claims being rejected

You can avoid common errors by using our checklists before billing for controlled work civil escape cases.

Updated checklists are now available to help you ensure you receive payments as quickly as possible when billing for escape case work in these categories:

  • civil
  • mental health
  • immigration and asylum

These checklists are used by caseworkers to check your claims.

But they are also useful for providers to help you ensure you have made the necessary checks and enclosed the required documentation.

What are the changes?

The checklists have been revised to put more focus on the most common errors and how these can be avoided. But there is no change to our requirements when submitting bills.

Staged checking process

The new format sets out clearly the ‘stage 1’ and ‘stage 2’ checking process followed by our caseworkers. This in line with our approach for civil certificated billing.

The ‘stage 1’ checks itemise the issues that cause the highest number of rejects in each category.

If a caseworker sees a reason to reject under ‘stage 1’ then the claim is returned without further checks being made.

Where a reason to reject is found under ‘stage 2’ the claim will be checked for a further 5 minutes or until 2 more reject reasons are found.

How to use the checklists

We recommend that the checklists are used as a pre-submission check.

If your claim is rejected, you can use the checklist again to help ensure that there will be no further rejects.

Further information

EC-Claim 1: escape fee case claim form – to download updated checklists

Published 23 November 2016