An examination by a doctor chosen and paid for by the other side - routine in injury, disability and workers' compensation claims, and not treatment.
An independent medical examination, usually called an IME, is a medical examination requested by an insurer, an employer or an opposing party rather than by the person being examined. It occurs across injury litigation, workers' compensation, disability benefits and some auto claims. The name is entrenched and somewhat misleading: the examining physician is selected and paid by the party requesting the examination, and the examination exists to produce an opinion for that party.
The practical consequence flows directly from that. An IME is not treatment and generally creates no doctor-patient relationship. Nothing said during it is confidential from the requesting party; the entire point is a written report to them. The examiner does not manage your care, is usually not going to see you again, and typically spends far less time with you than a treating clinician. Its purpose is usually to address a defined question - the cause of an injury, whether a condition has reached maximum medical improvement, the degree of permanent impairment, or the extent of work restrictions.
Whether you must attend depends on the source of the obligation, and there are three different ones. In litigation, a court may order a physical or mental examination where the person's condition is genuinely in controversy, on a showing of good cause, and the order specifies scope. In workers' compensation and in disability or auto policies, the obligation usually arises from statute or from a policy term requiring the claimant to submit to examination as a condition of benefits, in which case refusing may risk suspension of benefits rather than a court sanction. The rules on what may accompany the examination - an observer, a recording, a chaperone, a translator - differ substantially by state and by context, and are frequently negotiable in advance even where they are not guaranteed.
The report often carries real weight, and where the examiner's conclusion conflicts with the treating clinician's the dispute is commonly resolved on which is better reasoned and better supported rather than on titles. Two things therefore matter. First, accuracy: describe symptoms and limitations truthfully, including good days as well as bad, because exaggeration is the fastest way to lose a genuine claim and examiners are experienced at detecting it. Second, the record: the history given at an IME is compared against everything else on file, so inconsistencies of the ordinary human kind - a date misremembered, a prior injury forgotten - are worth avoiding by reviewing your own history beforehand.
The most useful advice comes before the examination, not after the report: what the examination is for, what may be asked, whether attendance is genuinely compulsory in your situation, and whether the scope or the conditions can be narrowed by agreement. If you are represented, tell your lawyer as soon as the examination is scheduled rather than afterwards. Keep your own contemporaneous note of when the examination started and ended, what was actually examined and what was asked, because reports occasionally describe tests that a claimant recalls differently and that note is the only counterweight. If a report is adverse, it is not the end: it can be responded to with a treating clinician's rebuttal, challenged on its reasoning, and in many systems answered with an examination of your own.
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