Supreme Court to Decide if IRE Doctor Can Evaluate Injury

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case on whether a workers' compensation judge erred in rejecting the opinion of an impairment rating evaluator on the basis that brain injuries were not within his specialty. In March, the Commonwealth Court ruled that so long as a doctor met the qualifications to serve as an IRE, the doctor's opinion could not be rejected just because his area of practice did not encompass the type of injuries that he was evaluating. Jeffrey Rhodes then petitioned the Supreme Court for review, arguing the Commonwealth Court had overstepped its a...