Appeal REMANDED for the Second time!

[JayBrown1]

This is crazy, I started a claim in 2004, they finally got around to making a decision to deny it in 2008, finally made it to the BVA in 2010. Then in 2015 it made it to a VLJ who REMANDED it back to the RO, the. It was sent back to the BVA in July 2015 and it finally made it back to a VLJ in late July of 2016 and now on the 29th of September 2016, it's been REMANDED back to the RO. This is making me mad because I don't see why it had to be remanded.

Have anyone had an appeal REMANDED twice? If so, what is usually going on where it would be a need for that?

[Berta]

You should receive a letter from the BVA explaining what they remanded for.

It might well  be because the RO did not handle the initial remand right the first time.

I had a remand too years ago from the BVA. At first I was pissed because I had asked the BVA to remand it for a VCAA violation.

They remanded instead for another VA med opinion. At that point I had 3 IMOs for the claims and they had 2 from the same VA doctor against the claim.

I jumped the gun and ordered a cardio IMO and paid about 2 thousand for it.I also got a copy of the 3rd VA opinion and knocked it down medically and sent my rebuttal to the BVA right away stating the 3rd VA opinion was too speculative, and was not from a cardio doc-as BVA had ordered-but instead from a PA.

Within a few months an BVA envelope came in the mail and I thought that again I had received someone else's decision (that happened to me twice) so I threw it on my desk and opened it a few days later thinking I would again have to try to contact the POA on the decision, and the BVA Ombudsman.

BUT

It was an award letter! For me!

The cardio doc had not prepared his IMO yet and the IMO company (MedOps I think) refunded half of my payment. The BVA agree with my rebuttal on the 3rd C & P and also that my VCAA rights have been violated, but those points were moot because my evidence had outweighed anything the VA had...

I KNOW how frustrating remands are...our taxpayers pay for countless re do's- via a remand of what well paid GS employees should have done right in the first place.

The letter from the BVA might have something in the remand request that you yourself can satisfy....

or maybe it is ,as in my case, an opinion from a specialist ordered in the initial remand and you might have gotten a non specialist opinion , or maybe something else....how to know until that letter comes.

BVA must insure us that our rights with VA are not stepped on by ROs.And we have more time to send BVA more evidence and rebuttal until they actually make the final decision.

Of course Time is the enemy of every claimant and VA knows that.

 

Edited September 30, 2016 by Berta

[Buck52]

http://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/26013/the-appeals-process-remands/

Author :Catherine Trombley

[Berta]

That is an excellent article, right to the point.

I liked this part:

"Appeals are also remanded if the regional office did not process your claim correctly – usually the result of insufficient evidence gathering. While the number of these avoidable remands has declined considerably in recent years, we continue to work to improve our processing accuracy. "

Failing to obtain SMRs, by not properly requesting them, or not requesting them at all due to saying they were lost in the St. Louis fire (which might be completely false),or failing to obtain SSDI records or private medical records that the veteran has authorized them to get, or numerous other  examples of "insufficient evidence gathering" is one reason I say here to try to follow the remand yourself if possible by trying to obtain what BVA wants the RO to get...

After the 2000 VCAA came into being, there were multiple remands due to RO's failure to follow this important regulation, that enhanced our rights and that did away with the " not well grounded" mantra VA had used for years to deny. I griped to the former head of the H VAC at the time( Congressman Bob Filner,) often when he was our guest at our old SVR shows with Jerrel, that this was causing a remand backlog years ago that had begun the tremendous BVA backlog now. 

In some ways I do agree that the level of remands has dropped because the VA has started to honor the VCAA via a statement of exactly what the claimant needs to provide to them.(5103 waiver)

BVA has said over the years in decisions that the claims process is not ' a one way street', meaning a lot is up to the claimant to provide VA with what they need.

Thanks for the link. Great info-from the VA itself.

 

 

[Buck52]

A Good Read About VCAA.

Maybe it will help fellow Veterans understand it better!

http://www.bva.va.gov/docs/VLR_VOL3/6-GriffinAndJones-VCAA-TenYearsLaterPages284-321.pdf

.............Buck

[broncovet]

A remand is your most likely outcome of a Board decision:

According to the 2015 BVA Chairmans report (the most recent), 47.07 percent of compensation cases are remanded,

17% are denied and 31.8% are allowd (awarded).  http://www.bva.va.gov/docs/Chairmans_Annual_Rpts/BVA2015AR.pdf 

page 26 "compensation" cases. 

 

In 2014,  only 46% of cases were remanded, so its actually gotten worse for remands according to the BVA chairman.

Compensation 15,627 29.7% (awarded) 24,261 46.1% (remand)  10,786 20.5%  (denied) 

Thus, the number of remands got worse, at least from 2014 to 2015.  

Edited October 1, 2016 by broncovet

[lotzaspotz]

We have claims from 1993 that are still pending after having traveled up and down the RO/BVA/CAVC remand ladder several times -- more than twice-- probably more like four.  So twice is not unusual.  The problem we run into is when the RO and/or the C&P examiner are unable or unwilling to follow the directives in the remand decision.  The RO goes along with an inadequate exam  (even after we've challenged it as inadequate), the BVA goes along with it, we appeal again to the CAVC, and they again remand everything back down the ladder.  Sometimes, even IMO's won't blast things loose.  The more time that passes from the original date of claim, in our case 23 years, the harder it is for examiners to evaluate the condition as it existed at the original date of claim.  They use the excuse that they can't adequately opine on the condition as it existed in the past without resorting to mere speculation, while reporting on the condition as it exists at present.  That, on top of the fact that their real area of medical expertise may have nothing even remotely having to do with the condition being evaluated, invites a remand.  

Edited October 2, 2016 by lotzaspotz