shaybugg

I was medically discharged from active duty on April 1, 2011 and filed my VA claim as soon as I had my medical file in hand which was April 24,2011. I only claimed things that were documented in my medical record so it shouldn't have been a complicated claim. I did my C/P exam on August 6, 2011 and was told it would take no more than 4 months to complete my claim. In October 2012 I still had no response on my claim and was continuously told " we have a high volume of claims" when I would inquire about the status. Finally I was fed up and contacted my Congressman to represent me in the matter as I was unable to work and had run out of savings earlier in the year. He contacted them on my behalf in the middle of November and by Christmas I had what they are calling a "preliminary rating" of 80% for the conditions they had sufficient evidence to rate. When I went on mybenifits to check the status of the actual claim I had the same label of "special correspondence" for my prelim rating and my original claim is still in decision phase as of today. 2 whole years later! I'm very glad for a great Congressman here in GA who was able to at least get my claim decided to the point I have an income! I'm pretty sure once they recieve contact from a government representative on your behalf they open it as a separate claim since it is from a POA and not directly from you. Once they have reviewed that specific request/claim then they close it. In my case, it dramatically affected my compensation claim by allowing them to give me a rating on some things while still evaluating others,being that my living situations were in great need of my compensation. This is all my Congressman requested is that I be given some kind of rating/income. They completed his request but still have more work to do on my compensation claim as a whole so they closed the SCC and my C/P claim remains open. I know this thread is old but when looking up the term Special Correspondence Claim I came across it and figured this info might be helpful to someone else in the future! A helpful tip: CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN!!! My claim was in development phase for over a year and a half when mine contacted them and I had a decision from them in less than a month!!