Jimmy2tymes

Gaston, looks like the appeal process was pretty long for you but well worth the wait. As for the "New and Material Medical Evidence" I submitted, it was in the form of a nexus letter from my doctor and was submitted with my NOD back in Dec 2015. I have not submitted any other supporting evidence since then and don't plan on too since that would probably further delay the process. I'm hoping that the nexus letter and NOD write-up will be enough to sway to DRO to reverse the claim denial.

Hi all, Called Peggy today and they informed me that my appeal/NOD has finally been "assigned" to a DRO. I know this doesn't mean that a decision will be made anytime soon but am glad to hear that some type of progress is being made nonetheless .....especially since it's been about 15 months since I first submitted my NOD. So just wanted to see if anybody has any experience of how long it took for a decision to made on your NOD once it was assigned to a DRO. Thanks in advance.

armymp2017- congrats on the 100% rating. Good luck on appealing for an earlier effective date. Just hang in there I'm sure it will work out for you.

Appreciate the responses. This feedback is really helpful. Navyguy 2013 - Just curious, what Regional Office is working your NOD? flores97 - Congratulations! Glad to hear it worked out for you. So you actually visited the Regional Office in Winston Salem to check your status? Did you they give you a hard time about showing up in person? Gastone- Good info. Sorry to hear about the ridiculous delay. Have you made any other progress since the hearing? Hope so because that's just a ridiculous amount of time. What RO is working your appeal? I actually submitted a well written nexus letter as my N&M evidence. I thought that I had enough evidence in my favor to win the initial claim, but in hindsight I should have included a nexus letter then, rather then waiting and submitting it with the NOD. Not sure how many DROs are at the Roanoke RO, but I can tell you that there are total of 333 VA employees at that RO; and 215 of those folks process initial claims and 32 of them handle appeals. Not sure what the rest of the employees are doing. Probably not much.

Hi all, I hope all you fine vets are doing well. I wanted to get some other vets experiences on how long it has taken your RO to review your NOD. I submitted my NOD to the Roanoke RO on 12/24/2015 and elected the DRO review. It's been sitting there collecting dust ever since and is currently at 420 days and counting. I call Peggy on a regular basis and they give me the same sorry response that it's currently waiting on the DRO review. They have also consistently told me that on average it takes the Roanoke RO 246 days to complete their NOD reviews. That average hasn't changed over the last year despite the Monday morning reports showing that this RO is working over 14,000 appeals. So I'm not placing much confidence in the 246 day average. Also, the ebenefits website does indicate that my appeal was submitted but it's not showing any progress either. Based on some posts from this site and some recent articles I came across on other sites, it looks that due to the appeals backlog I may actually be waiting even longer for a decision on the NOD....like upwards to 700 days just for the NOD decision itself (which doesn't factor the time it takes to process Form 9). So does anyone have any input to share regarding how long it took your RO to complete their review of your NOD? Just want to get a good idea of what to expect going forward. Thanks in advance for any input you can provide.