By: 19 December 2014
Medical experts must be accredited by MedCo by start of 2016

The Government has confirmed that medical experts looking to provide initial whiplash reports must be accredited by MedCo Registration Solutions from 1 January 2016.

The news comes as part of the Ministry of Justice’s latest amendments to the Pre-Action Protocol and Civil Procedure Rules which have also laid out details of the Government’s so-called “second phase of whiplash reform”.

From 6 April 2015, doctors must be registered with MedCo, the new whiplash report portal, in order to provide initial reports for soft tissue injury claims. The Government has also asked that medical experts or medical reporting organisations complete an expressions of interest survey on the MedCo website by 4 January 2015.

It has also said that claimant legal representatives sending Claim Notification Forms on or after 1 June next year will have to undertake previous claims checks on potential claimants and insert a unique reference number generated by that search in the additional information box in the Claim Notification Form.