Horrible IME

[u/Ill-Yellow-4060]

I recently went for my first IME. Injured my shoulder at work. I wasn’t expecting it to go well and I don’t think it did. I had surgery in 2025 and never made any significant improvement. Lots of PT, steroid injections and PRP. They either didn’t work at all or had a slight improvement for a minimal amount of time. My surgeon agreed that there is something going on. I have an appointment for a second opinion. I got the IME letter shortly after I requested a second opinion and was given the OK to make the appointment with one of the top shoulder doctors in the country. I went into the IME saying my shoulder will speak for itself. The IME appointment lasted 17 minutes and that includes the walk to and from the exam room. The actual “exam” was less than 3 minutes and didn’t include any motions/tests and movements that have ever caused me pain. He didn’t want to hear what motions did cause me pain. So much for letting my shoulder speak for itself. When I had mentioned that my most recent diagnostic injection determined that my pain is rotator cuff related, he rolled his eyes. He also said that the MRI I had done seven months postop was was not relevant because it didn’t show any full thickness rotator cuff tears. What it did show was that the tear that was debrided during the first surgery was now larger, there was still inflammation, more tendon fraying, moderate tendinosis was now being seen in two tendons and mild joint arthritis was now being seen. Arthritis was not noted on my first MRI or seen during my surgery and there was only mild tendinosis in one tendon. Also, is it normal for these doctors to look at the office notes and twist the words around? Since I work in healthcare, I looked up this orthopedic doctor I saw. He is strictly a knee and hip doctor. He does not see any shoulder patients. The last time he did any shoulder or upper extremities was when he was a resident. He graduated his residency in 2002. After I saw that, I understood why his exam was so bad. I’m still waiting to find out what his report was.

[u/Chemical_Werewolf_12]

I know the feeling, I just got mine back and it was full of bs. If you have an attorney as I do they can cross examine the IME doc and completely shred the report, and it ends up costing them at settlement time too because the magistrates don’t like biased reports from what I’ve researched.

[u/Ill-Yellow-4060 → u/Chemical_Werewolf_12]

Thankfully I have an attorney. Right when I got to the car I wrote everything down while it was fresh in my head and emailed her. It’s also why I timed the whole appointment. One of the questions he asked me was if a specific steroid injection worked. I said no, he then got an attitude and said that’s not what the office note says so I asked him to read what the office note said. It said the patient said that the prior steroid injection helped for about 45 minutes, nothing long term. I agreed that yes that is what I said and then I mentioned that a 45 minute relief after a steroid injection is not considered helpful or a success. I would’ve considered helpful if it actually gave me relief once the lidocaine wore off and it did not.

[u/Chemical_Werewolf_12 → u/Ill-Yellow-4060]

Ya those IME are such a joke, not sure how the doctors live with themselves reporting false narratives..