MediGraph Inc, © 2008

Sincerity of Effort in Functional Capacity Evaluations

Detecting sincerity of effort is occasionally a point of interest for insurance providers and some medical providers.  Despite the perceived need for such determinations, and despite the claims of vendors of equipment and software that purportedly establishes the determination of effort, the literature does not support sincerity of effort testing.

Because of the lack of supporting evidence for determining effort, we at MediGraph do not recommend employing such procedures.  However, recognizing the demands that insurance providers may place on the clinician, we have incorporated the NIOSH Static Lift Test as well as Hand Held Dynamometry testing into the FCE as an optional addendum.  Both of these procedures contain coefficient of variation testing.

We highly advise you to employ these tools only when the party reimbursing the FCE demands a sincerity statement (these and other copics are presented in the home study course).  The performance of coefficient of variation testing will not alter the results of the FCE, which would violate the integrity of the peer-review standards upon which the RFC-DOT is based.

The following link is from a paper that was published in the APTA journal that is critical of attempting to determine sincerity of effort:

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