Sec to provide TBI Releif

[Buck52]

Hot off the Grill

http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=2795

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

[Berta]

Yeah Great...in part:

"Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald has granted equitable relief to more than 24,000 Veterans following a national review of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) medical examinations conducted in connection with disability compensation claims processed between 2007 and 2015.

This action by the Secretary allows the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to offer new TBI examinations to Veterans whose initial examination for TBI was not conducted by one of four designated medical specialists and provides them with the opportunity to have their claims reprocessed. Equitable relief is a unique legal remedy that allows the Secretary to correct an injustice to a claimant where VA is not otherwise authorized to do so within the scope of the law."

We have TBI vets here,....I hope they get something from the VA advising them on this, if they had TBI exams done by non specialists.

The PR seems to indicate VA has already determined who those 24,000 TBI  vets might be.

Don't forget VA was supposed to identify thousands of potential Nehmer Footnote one claimants in 2010 and give the names of those veterans to NVLSP .Chuck and I were among many Nehmer claimants who were never put on that list.

If a vet thinks their TBI was rated improperly , hopefully they have appealed that already. And hopefully VA will contact them if a new C & P is needed.

I find it difficult to believe that there are vets who apparently did get a specialist's TBI C & P.

Unless the 24,000 is, in fact, every single vet who had a TBI C & P.

[awgv001]

Hey, I fit into this category, unfortunately, I'm still in the middle of the process of having it SC'ed.

[Berta]

More info here:

http://www.disabledveterans.org/2016/05/05/veterans-affairs-tbi-scandal-affected-25000-veterans/

The C & P exam must be done by one of the 4 types of professionals listed in the link.

 

[Berta]

Fox News TV is running this story as the latest VA Scandal....I missed it this AM, but hope to catch up on it. 

Any time a C & P is done by someone not qualified to do it ( as in the TBI situation) vets MUST fight for a better exam,

because the C & P exam is primarily what the RO uses to justify their denials.

 24,000( and in some news stories  almost 25,000) TBI vets who might need a re-do C & P by someone who is qualified....this is a disgrace because TBI was touted as the Signature Wound of the Iraq War and yet the VA  

has been, so far, deficient in properly assessing it, to the detriment of TBI veterans.

I still cannot comprehend why the so called vet orgs did not aggressively fight over the fact that VA owns QTC C & P exams until a decision is made on the claim.

This lack of rights to 'discovery' as found in civil courts of law, makes sure that vets have very little time left to fight the results in response to a SOC or even time to obtain an IMO doctor, and that means, if no rebuttal to the SOC changes their mind, and no DRO review or hearing is requested,

the claim will probably  be in lala land for many more years.

 I wonder how many tens of thousands of veterans never got a valid C & P exam done in the first place,in addition to the TBI vets.

 

 

[Military_Mind_99]

I believe I was one of the first 300 that was discovered from the Minneapolis VAMC when our local station, Kare 11, started to investigate proper examiners and doctor's license and certifications in early 2015. I also believe the VA was well aware of the situation but was waiting for it to eventually hit the fan to actually do anything.

Please see my previous post "TBI Re-examination?" for details. I was one of the lucky 50/300 that was actually service connected for TBI amongst other things. There is a pending Administrative Review open for my original date of claim and per eBenefits my current estimated date of completion has been pushed out to 10/16/19.

[Berta]

Yeah this TBI  fiasco is a disgrace.

VA decided ,in 2010 ,that only VAMH professionals can dx PTSD yet failed to provide the proper professionals for TBI vets.

"There is a pending Administrative Review open for my original date of claim and per eBenefits my current estimated date of completion has been pushed out to 10/16/19."

10/16/19 is a Disgrace too!

"I also believe the VA was well aware of the situation but was waiting for it to eventually hit the fan to actually do anything. " 

That statement is applicable to just about every scandal the VA has had so far.