Impairment Rating and Disability Determination eMedicine PMR

Description: According to the fifth edition of the Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, published by the American Medical Association (AMA Guides), impairment is defined as “an alteration of an individual's health status; a deviation from normal in a body part or organ system and its functioning.� The World Health Organization (WHO) defines impairment as “any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function.�
According to the fifth edition of the AMA Guides, disability is defined as “an alteration of an individual's capacity to meet personal, social, or occupational demands because of an impairment.� The WHO defines disability as an activity limitation that creates a difficulty in the performance, accomplishment, or completion of an activity in the manner or within the range consider normal for a human being. Difficulty encompasses all of the ways in which the performance of the activity may be affected.
Synonyms and related keywords: impairment rating, disability determination, disability ratings, IME, SSI, MMI, permanent and stationary, motivation, sincerity of effort, performance APGAR
Edward B Holmes, MD, MPH 2007