brokensoldier244th

It would be difficult, depending on the job. I have accommodations for most of the above including an accomodations to work from home always as long I'm within federal employment. I'm not tdiu, though.

Exactly. The phone people know enough to read some of the notes we leave, and that's it. There are no auto c&P's. They still all have to be reviewed and approved.

IMO or not you may just have to go. The standards and tests for a VA audiologist to prescribe hearing aids are different than hearing loss standards for a rating based on the CFR. I have tinnitus and HF hearing loss and I'm only rated for tinnitus. My VA audiologists exam is not the same as a C&p exam, and hearing loss is not enough to trigger the thresholds for HL.

This mostly affects Veterans where they would have gotten a higher rating if bilat had not been applied. You'll have to math it out. Much of the impetus for this has to to with vets that would have gotten 100% if not for the regulation saying it was required to apply bilat factor.

Medical opinions from private doctors that aren't occupational therapists are supposed to focus on the disabilties' affect on ADL (activities of daily living) and on how they would affect a veteran in an occupational environment, but not making a direct opinion on employability. They can say what activities the veteran can or cannot do, and with what level of difficulty physically or cognitively, but they can't make a direct opinion unless they have something in their CV or practice that makes they qualified to make an occupational opinion.

A rule change can't be retroactively applied to reduce a rating, so those cases above that you listed would either be grants or stay as they are. Static, 5/10/20 and over 55 only applies to RFEs and/or reductions.

In some cases, a bilateral factor actually makes it harder to get a higher rating, primarily due to rounding issues. If you do a bilateral factor you only get 1 number to round up. If you don't combine them it can result in 2 numbers being rounded up, resulting in a higher rating. Effective 16APR23 38CRF 4.26 is being revised to say "except as provided in para (d) of this section when a partial disability results from disease or injury of both arms........" etc. Para D is being revised to say "Exception- in cases where the combined evaluation is lower than what could be achieved by not including one or more bilateral disabilities in the bilateral factor calculation, those bilateral disabilities will be removed from the bilateral factor calculations and combined separately, to achieve the combined evaluation most favorable to the veteran". In claims adjudicated prior to 16APR23 where the veteran was rated 90% instead of 100% VA will readjudicate those claims. Compensation Services and Office of Field Ops has estimated some 3000 veterans' claims will be reviewed.

If there is a record of the request, like an 0820 record of the phone call in his Efolder he could contest it on the basis of he requested a reschedule and it wasn't done. Requesting reschedule isn't always automatically granted but 'reasons and basis' is pretty liberal, too. The system doesn't generate a C&P- they are created by VSRs based on a lookup by zip code that scans available locations daily. The zip that comes up closest available AND able to do the exam (not all locations may have an audiologist or something, or, during Covid a lot of locations' ability to do exams of many types was compromised) is the one that gets put in. I wouldn't think a C&P would have been necessary, though, since he already had exams, and hearing aids, and I'm assuming that it was within the year prior of him claiming HL/TInnitus?

VA has changed there rating table for tinnitus. That was proposed, still being discussed, but not finished or finalized.

But it doesn't- because its not a bill, and won't become a bill. Its better to shut things like this down before they start to spread and become 'fact'. Im sure that guy on YT is making a killing but he's spreading falsehoods that others who don't know better will believe, and then tell their friends, etc. That's how rumors become 'facts'.

Who knows?

Apologies- I skimmed further up and thought maybe I missed something about you already being rated.

That's not how VA claims review work. His filling for tinnitus has nothing to do with his other contentions and if they were in question for severity he wouldn't have gotten to 100 in the first place.

If you submit a supplemental 0995 then you are reopening it, you just don't get your original claim date

It may be N/R but after a year the HLR is final, so your supplemental DOC will be your new dining date.

only under certain circumstances.

To be somewhat fair, VSOs may say this but no RVSR or public contact person I've worked with or talked to (in my office or others) has ever told a veteran an estimated date of decision, for the reason you bring up. It depends on the claim, if the records/exams come back quickly or not, if they need to be sent back because the examiner didn't answer all the questions or if something is brought up in an exam that now needs an exam or clarification of its own.

I should have added to the top, but ill add here instead. You surely CAN talk to your VA doctor about MJ use. The worst that happens is it goes into VBMS, they ask you about it with some regularity at checkups, and you don't get opioids anymore. I see VHA files every day where the veteran uses MJ, CBD, tincture, distillate, whatever for pain for for PTSD. Its just added in the notes like any other thing.

The policy of the VA is that marijuana is illegal at the federal level regardless of what the state laws says. If you are known to be using marijuana the VA will take you off opiods because the point of MJ for pain relief is to not use opioids.

What are you in for? …..Littering……

I deleted out all your personal information- address, name, SS/File number. NEVER post stuff like that in the internet. What exactly do you need to know about? Adapting a vehicle?

I honestly can't speak to that (if they went for the sure thing with Adj Disd), it would totally be speculation. I do see a lot of "adj disorder" tossed around in STRs, though, along with things like 'immaturity syndrome" and other made up BS and it seems to frequent those claims where the incident was not reported but the veteran was dealing as best as they could. I understand completely why most are not reported, just like bum knees, minor (later major) head injuries, or whatever. We've all done it...er....not done it, because we didn't want to put up with our peers or cadre for the next X days giving us shit about it. One thing that has happened in the last few years (10 or so) is the recognition of WHAT can be an indicator of a latent stressor and what behavioral cues can indicate that all is not well in the state of Denmark. The recognition of these seemingly unrelated behaviors and deviations from the norm, when put into context with times and dates, can reveal enough to at least get an examination requested even when a black and white glossy photo with circles and arrows and writing on the back is not available. Younger or more experienced counselors/doctors/examiners can contextualize these markers enough to opine that SOMETHING happened even though there may not be a named assailant or crystallized details- all they have to hit is ALALAN. Do some probably get through on the barest of circumstantial evidence? I have no doubt- but I don't examine them, and I don't do the decision, I just find all the crumbs and put them together in as clear a narrative as I can with pointers to various places in their military and post-military history. The raters make the decisions based on what the examiner says and what is in the records that I research. They aren't psych doctors and they don't Dx- there are some times when there is so little to go on that the examiner can't make a Dx either, and all PTSD examiners for MST are all Psychs or Psy D's (practicing psychologists minus the academia part that makes a PhD). Those suck because after the hours I spend 1. I didn't 'win', and 2. I know that 'something' happened. Problem is that a good chunk of these particular OIG claims that I look at are 15-20-30 years old, and many have been gone through more than once, even appeals, and even under a prior OIG review (there was another one of these big reviews in 2018-2019. I do find a lot of mistakes there- but this was when any VSR of any length of time could develop these claims, too. Some of that inexperience is a VSR that should have known enough to say "slow your roll....I'm not comfortable taking these..." and didn't, or they were voluntold. Ive also found reports from military psychs that literally say things like "shouldn't have been x,y,z...." "should have known better than to have......." etc, moralizing from the bench, as it were. These entries in STRS are usually more of a product of their time, so my looking at them with a more modern perspective often finds deficiencies there, too. I love those- doing my 2 cents to shoot down a doctor's opinion, even if it WAS 30 yrs ago.

In the absence of a divorce finalized by the court, yes.

Oh good lord. Yeah, that sounds about par for the course. The internal NCO part will be difficult- surely it's not in their OMPF, but if behavioral markers can be pointed to during/post-incarceration that will go a long way. Hopefully, they are/have/gotten at least some treatment documented somewhere whether VA or otherwise. That helps with the propensity of evidence falling on their side of things. I get to read all sorts of stuff like this. It makes some days more difficult than others, but Ive experienced ST as a child, and my wife was assaulted in college while we were distance friends, so, at the end of the day, I know that every claim I get researched enough to get re-examined and rated (and hopefully awarded) is a win in my column towards balancing the scales.

It is related to it, yes. That report is what prompted VA to consolidate MST claims to only 5 sites with specially trained sub-groups, back in 2021. That then evolved into just creating a specific division just for MST. I'm one of the 15 people re-reviewing many of the claims that were part of that OIG Report review. There are only 15 of us out of VA doing this part, so it's going to take us a minute. Many of them are plagued with myriad issues- bad records, unseen, late flowing, never requested, non-liberally construed stressors, military reports/counselings from cadre and Cmd that would curl your hair with how badly they are worded and how blatantly sexist they are. Those are usually the older ones, though, 90's and older, before the military started taking MST more seriously, at least on paper.