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:
Click here for article in PDF format