Independent Medical Evaluations or IMES represent CMA's marquis service.  IMEs are requested by a diverse client base to determine critical issues specific to a given claimant's disability status.

Depending on the nature of a customer's request, an IME can address:

Functional Capacity Evaluations or FCEs assess the degree of disability relative to a return-to-gainful employment. FCEs augment the data generated through an IME and can be combined with an IME.

An IME and a FCE are combined to create a more powerful assessment tool. The FCE should precede the IME so that the examining physician has actual function-based statistics. The IME provider may then use this data when attempting to link specific impairments to disability status.

Pennsylvania's Workers' Compensation Act (Act 57) allows the use of IREs that determine the degree of whole body impairment caused by a compensable injury. This method can be used to determine the degree of compensability by focusing on whether an injury has resulted in permanent disability or temporary disability.

A medical record review can address similiar issues to that of an IME, however, they generally focus on the medical necessity and reasonableness of a given episode of care.