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Inconsistent responses to your questions in IME reports can sometimes be tricky if the responses do not directly contradict one another. However, if an expert offers two opinions that directly contradict one another, you should expect your IME vendor’s quality assurance editors to catch the issue and resolve it before it gets to you. Occasionally, direct contradictions slip past even the most detail-oriented editors (usually due to report length). In such cases, the expert will sometimes correct direct contradictions in their review of the report. Direct contradictions usually result from the expert misspeaking while dictating the report and are easily fixed.
The harder inconsistency issues arise when the expert doesn’t directly contradict themselves, but provides more than one opinion on the same issue and the statements are ambiguous or vague. Often, the ambiguity or vagueness arises between statements in the general impression section of the report and the specific questions section. A somewhat frequent example is when the expert states in the general impression section that the examinee continues to suffer from subjective complaints that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, relate to the injury or exposure in question. The expert then states the examinee sustained no permanency in answer to a specific question. The expert may see no inconsistency in these answers, but the cover letter writer undoubtedly will. In cases where the doctor is following the AMA Guides, this may not be an issue because the Guides explicitly allow for zero permanent impairment in cases where there is no objective evidence of injury and only subjective complaints. And usually this is what the expert means when stating subjective complaints relate to the accident or exposure but no permanency resulted.
In these more difficult cases, the IME vendor’s Quality Assurance editors should make every effort to pick up on such inconsistencies and go back to the expert to obtain an explanation of their position and provide clarity, but these are more difficult to catch than direct contradictions. In such cases, it is certainly fair to point out the ambiguity to the doctor and to ask for clarification on their opinion.
The expert in our example could clarify their opinion by stating something to the effect of, “While the examinee continues to register subjective complaints, there is no objective evidence of injury or impairment; hence, it is my opinion that the examinee has sustained no permanent impairment/partial disability as a result of the accident in question.”
Have you encountered these types of inconsistencies in IME reports and if so how did you resolve them?
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