Short answer. A court order is required, and it must be specific. Section 2 provides that the order for examination may be made only on motion for good cause shown and upon notice to the party to be examined and all other parties, and it must specify the time, place, manner, conditions and scope of the examination and who will conduct it.
What the law says
The order for examination may be made only on motion for good cause shown and upon notice to the party to be examined and to all other parties, and shall specify the time, place, manner, conditions and scope of the examination and the person or persons by whom it is to be made.
Rule 28, Section 2 — Order for examination. Read the full provision →
Not automatic — motion and good cause required
A party cannot simply demand or schedule an examination; it takes a motion showing good cause, decided by the court, before an examination can be ordered at all. This good-cause requirement binds the moving party with the burden of persuasion; a bare assertion that the opposing party's condition is at issue is not, by itself, good cause, and a motion that fails to explain why examination is actually necessary can be denied without ever reaching the scheduling details.
Notice to everyone, not just the examinee
Both the party to be examined and all other parties must receive notice of the motion, keeping the process transparent to the whole case rather than a private arrangement between the moving party and the examinee. This notice obligation binds the party seeking the examination; skipping notice to a party who is not the examinee but still has an interest in the outcome, such as a co-defendant, can be grounds to have the resulting order set aside for want of the process this section requires.
What the order must pin down
The order itself must specify the time, place, manner, conditions, and scope of the examination, plus the identity of the person or persons who will conduct it — leaving little room for the examination to expand beyond what was authorized. An order that leaves any of these elements vague, for instance naming an examination generically without fixing who will actually perform it, does not comply with Section 2, and the examined party may object to submitting until the order is corrected to spell out each required detail.
Why this specificity matters
Fixing these boundaries in advance protects the examined party from an open-ended or unexpectedly intrusive examination, since the scope and conditions are set by the court's order rather than left to the examiner's discretion. This protection binds the examiner as well as the requesting party; an examiner who exceeds the scope the order actually authorizes, for example by conducting tests never specified in it, has gone beyond what the examined party consented to submit to under the court's order.