Industry Knowledge

What is an independent medical exam, and is it really independent?

The name promises neutrality: an independent medical exam sounds like a fresh set of eyes with no side in your injury claim. The Law Office of Bobby Udall gives a plainer account of what the exam is. These are the insurance company's doctors, chosen for opinions useful to the defense, and their reports frequently minimize injuries your own records document thoroughly. That description does not make the exam something to refuse or fear. It makes it something to understand accurately before you walk into it, because the report it produces becomes part of how your claim is argued over.

The insurance company's doctors

Begin with who selects the doctor. In an independent medical exam, the doctor is one of the insurance company's doctors: selected by the insurer, not by you and not by the professionals who have been treating you. The Law Office of Bobby Udall states the selection principle without decoration: these doctors are chosen for opinions useful to the defense. A doctor whose opinions were not useful to the defense would not be the doctor the insurer sends its claimants to. That is what the word independent conceals, and it is the first thing an injured person should understand about the appointment they have been given.

None of this requires assuming anything about an individual doctor's honesty. It requires only noticing the structure: the exam exists because the insurer wants a medical opinion of its own choosing in the file, to set against your own records.

Reports that minimize documented injuries

The second part of the firm's account concerns what the reports do. Their reports frequently minimize injuries your own records document thoroughly. Set those two records side by side and the shape of the dispute becomes clear. On one side is your own record: the documentation of your injuries as they were treated and followed. On the other side is a report, produced from the insurer's exam, that presents those same injuries as smaller than your record shows. The insurer then argues from the smaller version.

That is why the exam matters out of proportion to the time it takes. The report is written to be used, and it will be used wherever the size and seriousness of your injuries are contested. Understanding that the minimizing is a known pattern, frequent enough for the firm to describe it as what these reports do, prepares you to treat the exam with the seriousness it deserves.

Preparation and challenge

The firm's account does not end with the problem, because the exam is not the last word. Your attorney prepares you for the exam, and challenges flawed exams afterward. Preparation is the part that happens before the appointment: knowing that the doctor is the insurance company's doctor, knowing the report's likely direction, and going in with your own documented record understood. An injured person who walks in expecting a neutral examination is unprepared in a specific way: they expect the report to reflect their injuries as their records document them, and the firm's description says that expectation is often disappointed.

Challenge is the part that happens after. When an exam is flawed, it can be challenged, and The Law Office of Bobby Udall's practice includes rebuttal experts when the exam strays from the medicine. A rebuttal expert answers a flawed exam on its own ground, which is how a one-sided report gets contested rather than merely complained about.

Handling these exams routinely

The Law Office of Bobby Udall handles these exams routinely as part of its personal injury work, and that word, routinely, is itself information. A firm that sees these exams regularly has seen the pattern the firm describes: doctors chosen for opinions useful to the defense, and reports that minimize thoroughly documented injuries. Routine handling also means the response is practiced rather than improvised: preparation before the exam, and challenge, including rebuttal experts when the exam strays from the medicine, after it. For an injured person, that steadiness matters, because the exam will arrive on the insurer's schedule, and meeting it with a prepared response is the difference between the exam being an event in your claim and being the verdict on it.

An independent medical exam is conducted by the insurance company's doctors, chosen for opinions useful to the defense, and its reports frequently minimize injuries your own records document thoroughly. Your attorney prepares you for the exam and challenges flawed exams, including with rebuttal experts when the exam strays from the medicine. The Law Office of Bobby Udall handles these exams routinely, and can be reached at 801.980.7777.

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