A bill for lawyers

I am writing in response to the Guest Opinion on March 13 authored by Michael Walker of Delay, Curran et al plaintiffs attorneys (“Workers deserve overhaul of IMEs”).

I am a semiretired physician and have been doing IMEs for about 8 years. The subject here is proposed bill SB6440, a proposal that will be extremely negative to the process of Independent Medical Evaluations but fits well with plaintiff attorneys’ goals of discarding the current IME system. Mr. Walker wants this bill to be passed right away with no further discussion. I disagree and feel that more discussion is necessary to preserve the majority of the existing process.

In my view this bill is meant to benefit plaintiff lawyers and disgruntled claimants unhappy with the IME process and who are seeking different and more beneficial conclusions than those voiced in the IME report.

The rest of the article goes on to his display Mr. Walker’s uninformed opinion of the IME process and the physicians who perform them.

The inaccuracies, bias and lack of understanding of the IME process expressed by the authors of this article is startling.

As it is, SB6440 is anti-IME to the point that many if not most of the physician participants likely either cut back on performing IMEs or quit all together.

George Monkman M.D.

Spokane