[IPAC-List] question for participants about PATs

[Gene Carmean]

Hello All:

Within the last month I have reviewed two Requests for Proposals from 
public agencies.  In both cases they were from state Departments of 
Transportation (Oregon and Colorado).  These RFPs seem very strange 
to me and I am wondering if this is an emerging trend.  I have one of 
the RFPs and will email it to anyone who wants it.

Both the RFPs ask for physical ability test(s) but no specific jobs 
are mentioned.  It appears they wish to devise a test(s) for the 
entire agency.

The RFPs mention the ADA but ignore the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  I 
have not seen a federal ADA case about physical ability 
testing.  Perhaps one or more exists.  Most of the cases I have seen 
are about gender discrimination.  I know of one case in California 
under state law where the employee was disabled but that one was 
settled before trial.   I wonder why there is such emphasis on the 
ADA but the Civil Rights Act is ignored?  The Uniform Guidelines are 
never mentioned.

The qualifications to perform these services are usually limited to a 
nurse or a physical therapist.  While I have not looked at the 
curriculum of nursing students, I have checked ten graduate and 
undergraduate schools of physical therapy.  In that search I found 
not a single course on employment law, statistics, industrial 
psychology, educational psychology, exercise science, or any other 
relevant field.  I wonder why therapists and nurses are included but 
those in the relevant fields are excluded?

Most troubling of all is that the Colorado RFP specifies that the old 
DOT job analysis method from the 1930s be utilized, even though the 
National Academy of Sciences rejected this as a viable job analysis 
methodology more than 34 years ago.  Maybe I am missing something, 
but this seems odd to me.

I was looking for the group for some comments on this.  I had never 
seen RFPs as strange as these, but to see two within a month is a 
little unnerving.




Gene Carmean
MED-TOX Health Services
3350 Shelby Street, Ste. 200
Ontario, California 91764

909 944 3181 Tel

www.med-tox.com

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