A med-legal report is thirty pages of history and examination wrapped around five numbers. Raters read those five first and judge the rest by whether it supports them. Here is that reading order — the same one built into the reserve workflow.
The five numbers
1 · WPI per body part — and the AMA Guides table it came from. A bare percentage with no table citation is the report’s weakest joint. 2 · Apportionment — the §4663 split and, critically, the reasoning; “degeneration, 20%” without the how-and-why is vulnerable, and the apportionment guide shows what each point is worth. 3 · The job description — it selects the occupational variant, and a “light duties” description of a heavy job quietly moves thousands. 4 · Age at injury — trivial to verify, occasionally wrong. 5 · Completeness — every claimed part addressed, or expressly deferred.
The red flags
Ratings without tables. Apportionment without reasoning. Grip-loss ratings where the Guides don’t support them. Add-ons — pain over the 3% cap, or psych/sleep add-ons on a post-2013 physical injury where §4660.1(c) limits them. And internal inconsistency: a “moderate” history examined into a “minimal” impairment, or vice versa.
Then check the arithmetic
Everything after the five numbers is deterministic: the calculator turns them into the string, the percentage, and the dollars — and the decoder verifies any string already in the file, step by step against the schedule. Disagreements about the medicine go back through supplementals and depositions (the AME/QME machinery); disagreements about the math should not survive five minutes. Informational use only; not legal or medical advice.