Building a medical chronology from independent medical examination reports

Independent medical examinations are typically requested by an insurer or defense counsel, and the examiner's findings frequently diverge from the treating physician's. A chronology entry for an IME needs to capture the examiner's own findings, their causation opinion where stated, and any impairment rating or work-capacity conclusion, since these are usually the parts a case turns on.

The most useful thing about placing an IME into a full chronology rather than reading it alone is comparison: an IME represents one exam on one day, and stacking it against months of contemporaneous treating notes makes it clear whether the IME's conclusion is consistent with, or a clear outlier against, the ongoing treatment record.

IME reports also often state their own methodology and duration briefly (how long the exam lasted, what records the examiner reviewed beforehand), and that detail is worth preserving since it's frequently relevant to how much weight the report should be given.