IME Escort Services for Plaintiff Lawyers
IME guards or IME escort services use trained professionals to accompany, prepare, and protect the clients of plaintiff lawyers from unscrupulous doctors at Independent Medical Exams, including No-Fault exams, Worker’s Compensation exams, and personal injury Defense Medical Exams or IMEs.
IME Watch Dogs, Guards, and Escort Companies
Plaintiff Exam Services – Plaintiff Exam Services provides medical doctors to accompany clients to medical exams.
Pros and Cons of Using an IME Escort Company
Most personal injury law firms will send someone, whether a lawyer, paralegal, or another employee, to accompany the client at the IME, but it’s much better to send a trained professional from an IME company.
I have gone to defense medical exams with clients when using one of these companies, and I was amazed at how competent they are at what they do. I will never again send a client with someone from our law office.
Advantages of Using an IME Escort Company
- Well-trained professionals who are extremely effective at their job. They also appear at exams multiple times every day, so they get good at what they do.
- Professionals prepare lawyers’ clients for the physical exam.
- Prevents clients from answering inappropriate questions and being deposed.
- Prevents clients from undergoing unauthorized tests such as X-rays or MRIs.
- You’ll get a written report of the start and end times of the physical, what happened at the physical exam, what was said at the physical, tests conducted, tests omitted, errors, and how the client performed.
- Professionals can testify in court about what happened at the physical exam.
- Prevents clients from being approached by unscrupulous personal injury lawyers looking to grab your case.
- The inexpensive cost is a case expense. Some IME services allow the upfront cost to be deferred until settlement.
- Most IME services have professionals who can act as a translator.
For Defense Medical Exams, some IME services can even send a licensed physician.
Disadvantages of Not Using an IME Escort Company
- Sending a law firm employee is costly, considering the travel time and time at the IME, which usually includes an hour of waiting for the exam.
- Paralegals may be great at compiling legal documents, but they’re ineffective at preparing and representing a client during a physical exam because they’re not trained for that, and they don’t do it several times per day.
- If you’re a lawyer, you can’t testify to prove the doctor lied.
What Is the Definition of an IME or DME?
IME Meaning
IME is an abbreviation for Independent Medical Exam. An IME is a medical examination conducted by a doctor for a Workers’ Compensation, No-Fault, or health insurance company to determine if insurance coverage for medical treatment should be paid or continued.
As a personal injury lawyer, all of my car accident clients will have a No-Fault IME within 3-6 months of the car accident. Personal injury lawyers know the real purpose of a No-Fault IME is to deny further medical treatment so the insurance company can stop paying.
A No-Fault IME is not independent because the doctors who perform these medical exams work for a company that is hired by and paid by the No-Fault insurance company. I have been told by some of these doctors that my client had a serious injury, and they wanted to approve more treatment, but they were afraid of losing their work. I call a No-Fault IME an NFE for No-Fault Exam, which is what it is.
Because these doctors are biased and paid by an insurance company, it’s a good idea for personal injury lawyers to have IME Companions or an IME escort service accompany clients to the IME.
DME Meaning
DME is an abbreviation for Defense Medical Exam. A DME is a medical examination conducted by a doctor designated by a defense lawyer hired by an insurance company. A DME is conducted for the purpose of defending a personal injury lawsuit.
The doctor who conducts the DME will write a report for the defense lawyer. If the personal injury lawsuit is not settled, the doctor who conducted the DME will testify for the defense at the trial of the personal injury case.
Insurance companies call this medical exam an IME because they like the sound of an Independent Medical Exam, but these exams are not only far from independent, they’re not supposed to be independent. They are paid by the defendant’s insurance company and are supposed to be biased in favor of the defendant.
The plaintiff also has his or her doctor testify at the trial. The money for the plaintiff’s doctor is advanced by the personal injury lawyer and repaid by the plaintiff from the money received from the defendant’s insurance company.
The jury at a trial will listen to the biased testimony of the doctors for both sides and form their own opinion.
Because defense doctors are biased, paid by an insurance company, and because their testimony will have a significant effect on a jury verdict, personal injury lawyers should have IME Companions or an IME escort service accompany clients to the defense medical exam.
Are an IME and DME the Same?
No. The acronym IME is used by insurance companies, defense lawyers, and even plaintiff personal injury lawyers interchangeably to describe No-Fault Exams (NFE) and Defense Medical Exams (DME). But that’s wrong.
Note: For the purposes of this article, an NFE and DME will be incorrectly referred to as an IME.
Insurance companies and defense lawyers use the acronym IME for all medical exams because it sounds fair, but it isn’t. An IME is not independent, although “Independent” is part of the name. An IME should be independent, but it is not.
A DME is not supposed to be independent. It is supposed to be biased in favor of the defendant. The jury is supposed to evaluate the supposedly biased evidence of the plaintiff’s medical doctors and weigh that against the always biased evidence of the defendant’s medical doctors.
Plaintiff personal injury lawyers should never call a defense medical exam an IME.
Why Isn’t an IME Independent?
- No-fault insurance companies and health insurance companies want to discontinue making payments for medical treatment.
- Insurance companies cannot discontinue payments for medical treatment without a doctor’s report.
- The doctors are hired by insurance companies that pay for the medical exams.
- These doctors perform many medical exams all day long. Each exam usually takes only minutes, and the doctors’ income from doing IMEs can be as high as 6-7 figures per year.
- The doctor hired by the insurance company is not your doctor.
The medical exam isn’t conducted to help your doctor give you better medical treatment.
Why Is an IME Called an Independent Medical Exam?
The doctors who perform the medical exams work for a medical exam company that is not owned by the insurance company.
But there is substantial financial pressure on the medical exam company to discontinue medical treatment, and they pass that on to the doctor performing the exam.
Can an IME Doctor Be Trusted?
No, but maybe if the doctor is a grouch. Beware of friendly IME doctors!
For some reason, I’ve noticed that less friendly, grouchy IME physicians sometimes allow further treatment or provide relatively positive medical reports for defense exams.
However, IME doctors who are friendly, smiling, and very pleasant generally never allow further treatment. They write medical reports that read like they were examining someone else, like an 18-year-old athlete who never had an accident.
How Do IME Doctors Deny Medical Treatment?
IME doctors usually deny payment for further treatment of an injury in a car accident by a No-Fault insurance company. The IME doctor will claim any of the following:
- The injury wasn’t caused by the car accident.
- The injury has resolved (gotten better).
- The medical treatment has not helped the claimant to get better, is not relieving the pain, and further medical treatment will not be of any benefit.
- The claimant did not complain of any pain related to the medical treatment.
- The claimant did not have a restricted range of motion.
- The claimant did not show medical evidence of an injury or pain and was faking the injury.
Can IME Doctors Ask Questions?
Some questions are allowed, and some are not. But that doesn’t stop an IME doctor from asking questions that can damage your case.
For instance, an IME doctor might ask questions about the accident. I have seen doctors ask questions about how the accident happened, such as, What color was the traffic light? What were you doing when you tripped? and other similar questions. I would not allow my client to answer.
At one DME or defense medical exam, an orthopedic surgeon was insistent about asking my client questions about what color the traffic light was. I refused to let my client answer his questions about the car accident.
The doctor refused to proceed with the exam unless I allowed my client to answer the questions. I told him he could cancel the physical if he wanted to, so he called the IME company, who advised him that he was not allowed to ask those questions. He then decided to go ahead with the physical.
Will a Lawyer Go With Me to the Physical Medical Exam?
I used to personally go to most No-Fault exams and all defense medical exams, but that’s very time-consuming.
Some personal injury lawyers send a paralegal to the IME exam or DME exam to accompany their client. Hopefully, the paralegal will prevent the client from answering questions that the doctor doesn’t have the right to ask and prevent the doctor from performing tests that the doctor doesn’t have the right to perform.
Some personal injury law firms allow clients to go to IME physicals alone, which is a really bad idea. Clients should never be allowed to appear at a physical exam alone, so the client isn’t subjected to an unauthorized deposition, and it can be proved if the doctor lies.
But a better way to protect clients from unscrupulous IME and DME doctors has been available in recent years. An IME escort or guard company that specifically trains employees to protect clients at IME exams.
IME and DME Preparation
We only recommend using an instructional DVD as preparation prior to an exam, not instead of using an escort to accompany your client to the exam.
IME Preparation Inc. offers instructional DVDs by Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeons to take your client through an IME/DME clinical examination.
The DVDs instruct your client on what each part of the examination is supposed to elicit and what the physician learns from the response. Your client will be instructed on the tricks that IME examiners use to elicit responses that allow them to opine that your client is engaging in secondary gain symptom amplification and/or malingering.