Tennessee: Party's Presentation of Medical Evidence that Disagrees with IME Physician's Opinion is Insufficient to Rebut Presumption of Correctness

Acknowledging that the statutory presumption of correctness afforded the opinion of an independent medical evaluator who had been selected from Tennessee's Medical Impairment Registry ("MIR") could be rebutted by clear and convincing evidence, an appeals panel of the Tennessee Supreme Court nevertheless held that the injured employee had offered no such clear and convincing evidence in the instant case. The mere showing that the MIR physician and the employee's physician disagreed as to the proper diagnosis in the case was insufficient to rebut the IME's findings [see Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-204(d)(5)].

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

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See Rodgers v. Rent-A-Center East, Inc., 2020 Tenn. LEXIS 280 (July 29, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.02.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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