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Work capacity evaluators.

• When is the best time to undergo a functional capacity evaluation (FCE)?
• During the first three to six months after an accident, the injured person's signs found in the family doctor's examination are usually significant enough for the doctor or physiotherapist to infer that you are not able to handle your job or household demands. Some time between three and six months after the accident, however, ICBC and your disability insurer may start pressuring you and talking about cutting off benefits. At that time, an FCE can be a very valuable tool in objectively measuring your limitations.
  
  If a person has ongoing limitations and pain, we like to have them undergo functional capacity evaluations every six to fifteen months, depending on the circumstances.
  
  If a person does not recover from his or her injuries after two or three years in spite of following all the rehabilitation recommendations of the functional capacity evaluator and doctors, and the person's court trial is approaching, the evaluator will prepare a final report. This report will contain simple graphs showing the trend lines over time for each part of the person's functioning. It may be, for example, that a person's left shoulder strength plateaued a year earlier, even though that individual fully complied with an exercise program and cortisone injections. A medical specialist can rely on this trend line when asked to provide a prognosis (prediction of the future) of the injured person. When the doctor that ICBC hires states that the injured person will likely go on to a full recovery in another 6 months, the medical specialist for the injured person need only show that the patient's functioning has not improved in the past year, in spite of following all exercise and treatment recommendations. Therefore there is no reason to believe that is will suddenly start improving in the future after the case is resolved.