IME Doctors Caught on Tape
The New York Times has a good article today on Independent Medical Examination doctors, including a doctor referred to by New York injury lawyers as "Doctor Says-No." We have a number of IME doctors in Maryland that must be related to him because they have the exact same last name.
The New York Times would not have written this story if it did not have examples of patients possessing the great weapon of the modern age: "I've got it on tape." The article has examples of doctors who told the patient one thing in the evaluation - which the patient's taped with their phones - and put the opposite conclusion in the report.
In Maryland, our lawyers are seeing a new wave of IME doctors replacing the old guard of discredited doctors that juries stopped believing long ago. Below are a few tools to fight for your clients to get fair defense medical exams.
My colleague John Bratt (author of the Baltimore Personal Injury Lawyer Blog) is in the middle of a battle in a Montgomery County case where the expert is refusing to meet the very same conditions imposed against this same expert by a judge in another case we had with him in Montgomery County. In another accident case my colleague Rod Gaston has with the same doctor, the doctor was ordered to produce his financial records. Bizarrely, the insurance company withdrew the doctor but he still filed an interlocutory appeal. I'm looking forward to finding out who has been paying his legal fees for all of this. My bet: the insurance company.
(Note: I have fixed the New York Times link, as requested. Thanks to all for bringing it to my attention.)
The battlefield on this issue has a lot of nuance but what accident lawyers really want is to know how much money the expert makes from doing IME and other legal work and what percentage of the expert's income derives for working for insurance companies in legal matters. Why? Because juries a smart enough to realize that doctors who make a great deal of money doing legal work are far more likely to match the profile of these doctors in this New York Times article.
Related Posts:
Our Conditions for an Independent Medical Exam (IME)
Thoughts on Cross Examining IME Doctors (questions accident lawyers should ask)
Should Lawyers Videotape Independent Medical Exams?
How to Cross Examine IME Doctor
National Law Journal Article on IMEs (I'm quoted in the article)
Response to Protective Order for IME Doctor Not to Produce Financial Records
Comments
My mother has been going through a nightmare with these fraudulent IME doctors. She just had her sixth IME in one and a half months, and this last one was so painfull, that even after taking pain medication prior to the exam, the testing caused so much pain she nearly passed out. Four days later she is still having masive pain in her neck and arm. She has spoken with a fraud investigator regarding possible signature fraud by her claims examiner for the self-insured overseeing her injury (he signed off on the job analysis, when only the treating physician is authorized to sign), but we are coming upon two years and she needs surgery. At this point, her doctors fear much longer and she will lose complete use of her left arm. I wish I knew how these doctors can sleep at night. I hope you all continue to fight for those with these injuries, so they can all get the treatment they deserve!
Posted by: Veronica Willer | April 20, 2009 8:10 PM