Ontario’s injured auto accident victims are legislated to attend insurer medical examinations (IMEs) in order to determine the extent of their injuries and access their policy benefits.
There is no limit on how many examinations auto accident claimants must attend in order to access treatments and benefits from their insurer. Ontario’s insurers consistently spend more on IMEs than they do on treatment and rehabilitation each year.
Access to benefits depends on the insurer medical examination; it is the key to best possible recovery so every medical examination (IME) should be of the highest possible quality. Access to recovery resources depends on it.
Ontario’s auto insurance medical expert reports have been described by Ontario’s arbitrators and judges as “inaccurate, failed, misleading, defective, incomplete, deficient, not correct and flawed”.
Many victims who have attended IMEs complain to the IME assessor’s regulatory College so that others will be protected. Many of the complaints are about the bias demonstrated by the medical assessor or the qualifications of the assessor hired by their insurer. They shouldn’t have their concerns ignored and the result shouldn’t be that the information and complaints history about IME providers is kept out of sight and out of mind of the public.
The only time the public can see what is happening with Ontario’s third party assessors is when a party appeals a College decision at the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) whose decisions are publicly available on the Canlii website. HPARB now anonomizes their decisions on Canlii thus adding another layer of protection for the IME medical expert who is counting on the public staying in the dark about the quality of Ontario’s medical assessments.
It is in the public’s interest that we publish the un-redacted HPARB decisions that speak to the quality of the medico-legal experts reports. It’s about transparency, public safety and the risks victims take in attending the insurer medical examinations. You can contact HPARB to request your own copies of un-redacted HPARB decisions at http://www.hparb.on.ca/scripts/english/contact.asp.
AMANDA LAMPMAN and ROBERT NOTKIN, MD Nov 3_15
MICHEL LACERTE, MD and GHOLAM DEWARI Jan 6_15
CARION FENN and HENRY T. M. DEVLIN, MD Jul 30_14
DANIEL HORBAN, OT and SARAH HARDY Aug 6_14
CAROL ANN KOLMAN and ESMAT ABDEL ALEEM MOHAMED DESSOUKI, MD and LAKSHMI NARAYANA PANT VORUGANTI, MD
JOHN L. DIMOCK, MD and LISA EGAN Jun 11_2014
JON CONNOLLY and CURT WEST, Ph.D., C.Psych June 4_14
DAVID EVANS and GAIL COPPENS PT Sept 5_13
SCOTT SIEBERT and GARSON CONN, MD July 24_13
MONIC CUFF and KARLA ELLIS, O.T. Sept 4_13
PAUL FRANCIS ROBERT, MD and BEVERLY URQUHART July 25_13