FCE and Impairment Ratings

FCE and Impairment Rating

FCE: A Functional Capacity Evaluation or FCE is an assessment for workers who have suffered injuries that could affect their employment opportunities. The worker's ability to perform work and their physical tolerances to a variety of real and/or simulated work activities is assessed throughout a lengthy testing process. Paradigm offers a full range of functional capacity tests and equipment to determine a patient's physical tolerances.

Impairment Rating: An Impairment Rating is an assessment of the physical limitations of a worker who has suffered injury and a comparison to the overall statistical norms for daily work. These comparisons help categorize the short and long term affects of the injury on the patients ability to function. Measurements taken by a physical therapist are processed and applied to statistical data concerning typical human funtion, returning percentages of ability.

Information Collected

A Functional Capacity Evaluation collects objective information relevant to the determination of feasibility for employment. This includes the identification of individual strength, abilities, needs and preferences by undertaking the following activities:

Subjective questionnaires
Real and/or simulated work activities
Consistency of effort measures
Standardized tests

Impairment measurements are taken by professional clinicians. Measurements taken are processed in a sophisticated computer software package, returning the values needed for rating an individual.