hypertension Rating Claim

[COOL BREEZE]

If you have very HBP that should support DX of secondary Athero. Does not HBP lead to hardening of arteries? I am not a doctor, but I sure as heck would get outside opinion on this and appeal. How are your kidneys?

Should I file athero secondary to BP? I believe the kidneys are fine. I think what they are trying to say this is part of you getting old.When I find a new VSO-this info you gave me I will ask if they can file that. This is going to be a long process.

[COOL BREEZE]

BTW-you did good here because ANY award is good!!!! But there is much to work with on appeal.

"The overall or combined evaluation is 30% effective October 30,2009, it becomes 50% effective January 27,2010(what does that mean)"

I don't know what they mean as to the October date-what was your rating prior to that date?

Was that the date of this claim?

When they send the retro (and it pays to check retro against the historic rate table at the VA web site and also to see if they properly included any dependents- they snookered me out of a while year of DC once and it took me over a year to figure that out)

you might want to consider investing in an Independent medical opinion.

Then again maybe they overlooked some critical evidence.

They should have listed all the evidence they considered in the decision and there might well be something missing.

It seems that maybe they made what is called a "staged" rating?

Hard to know-wish we could read the decision.

Congrats Coolbreeze and relax a little on this.I agree that it appears they made some errors here.

Berta what do you mean by a stage rating? Yes there were numerous errors. I had estimated a rating between 70-80% by using the tables. I am very happy on this 1st decision. It did several things. One, by getting to 50% that means I will be getting 94% of the money they were with holding since I was getting a VA claim, 2 retro payments, one from the VA, and the other from the military backdated from the date of the claim, dependency, special k, plus a jump from 30-50%. I thought I did quite well with everyones help here including yours. Now the road I have to travel for the appeals-that is the part I am having a problem with. In another topic I mentioned I had a VSO-definitely got of to a bad start with the process. There were a lot of issues that weren't even mentioned, some that left out evidence that would have given me a higher rating. And of course the one that has me really upset is the cervival. I told them the truth as I had a few rear end accidents that aggrevated that injury and that stated that was a non-service connected issues-that happened after service. The doctor that did the rating wrote about the helo accident causing this issue, and gave me a flex score that would have given me at least 30% Now I know you can't tell about any incident that occurs to make it worse, however they requested all medical info from out side sources. Thanks

[Berta]

Berta what do you mean by a stage rating?

“The degree of impairment resulting from a disability is a factual

determination and generally the Board's primary focus in such

cases is upon the current severity of the disability. Francisco

v. Brown, 7 Vet. App. 55, 57-58 (1994); Solomon v. Brown, 6 Vet.

App. 396, 402 (1994). However, the Court recently held that

"staged" ratings are appropriate for an increased rating claim

when the factual findings show distinct time periods where the

service-connected disability exhibits symptoms that would warrant

different ratings. Hart v. Mansfield, 21 Vet. App. 505 (2007).”

A veteran could be at 30% at for a disability and they NOD the rating and , by medical evidence , the VA could “stage” the rating (make it higher than 30% for a specific period of time lets say at 50% )and then even perhaps find it is currently at a 70% rate as the disability has gotten much worse since it was 50% disabling.

The 70% would then warrant TDIU consideration at that point if the veteran is not working and medical evidence could support a TDIU finding.

These types of rating could benefit a veteran in many ways.

I imagine many disabilities get worse during the long claims process anyhow.

I think I should have cued a decision they made on my husband years ago.

He was 30% SC for PTSD and then 100% SC P & T by posthumous rating 3 years after he died. With an EED for the 100% for 3 years prior to his death.

He didn't go from 30 % to 100% overnight. They should have considered a staged rating.