Don’t Avoid an Orthopedist

Personal injury attorneys have the right to use independent medical examinations for their clients when figuring out the extent of injuries. If you're looking to have this done for orthopedic injuries for one of your clients, here are some things to keep in mind regarding independent orthopedic evaluations.

Make Sure Party is Truly Neutral

In order to benefit the most from one of these independent medical exams (IME), you need to make sure the examiner is truly a neutral party. They shouldn't have any skin in the game for performing this assessment on your client that's dealing with orthopedic-related injuries.

That's going to help you get better results at the end, as well as show you're not trying to persuade this examiner into making an assessment that leans towards your client. Everything done will be objective and that's key for taking these results and using them as evidence.

Prepare Clients for Examination in Advance

You want your clients to be completely comfortable during an independent medical examination because that's going to give the examiner unlimited assess when performing meaningful tests. Then you can show exactly what your clients are dealing with in terms of their orthopedic-related injuries.

It will be easier to get clients to respond in a favorable way to these independent medical examinations when you prepare them for these assessments early on. You can discuss the topics that will be covered by the examiner and the tests they'll probably perform. Then your clients can be better patients and do exactly what the examiner needs them to do for proper injury documentation that you can then use later on. 

Get Clarification from Examiner When Necessary 

If you deal with orthopedic-related injuries all the time as a personal injury attorney, then you may have a lot of knowledge of orthopedics. Even still, there may be things you're not so sure about like a particular condition or medical term.

It's best to have the independent medical examiner go over these things with you so that you can get clarification and then have a better idea of how to use their exam to your client's benefit. 

When personal injury attorneys need to gain more insights into their clients' orthopedic injuries, they can use independent medical examinations. As long as you take them seriously and do what's in the best interest of your clients, these exams will reveal helpful data that you can then use to build up client cases.