Sleep Apnea

[goose_716]

Has anyone tried to connect sleep apnea to being caused by working a rotating schedule.  I worked 2 days 2 swings 2 mid for about 13 years out of my 20.  Rest of my career was rotating schedule but it was not as xtreme. 

[brokensoldier244th]

To a point, however just finding a doctor to say what you want won't get you a good IME. Lots of people go to the courthouse all the time with IME's of all sorts of disabilities and things during lawsuits, where they literally pay a doctor to say whatever they want. Some doctors will. Its unethical, and they should have their licenses removed. 

I don't consider doctors that charge 500-10,000 dollars and advertise on the internet as 'vet friendly'. I consider they to be predatory. There is no way a doctor can churn out IME's for veterans like some of them do and still treat patients or stay abreast of current medical knowledge- you know, 'being a doctor' stuff. They have ceased becoming doctors and are akin to prescription mill docs that will sign off on anything- for a fee. *plink plink* My two cents. 

 

[jfrei]

I think 500 for a vocation assessment and or doctors opinion isn’t the far off. I paid 500 for one after one person tried to charge me 10k because it was sTBI and knew I had years of retro l obviously didn’t pay the 10k and he missed out on a dime...

[Dustoff1970]

After having read hundreds of BVA and CAVC veterans court decisions over past thirty years and up to present day I can tell other vets that many paid for private doctor IMOs made the difference in the BVA granting a vet his disability appeal as in many of these BVA decisions the BVA law Judge stated that Dr. Jones or whoever detailed medical opinion was more credible or probative evidence than the VA C&P Examiner's negative opinion against the vet's claim and especially that the C&P examiner did not offer up any detailed rationale explanation to justify his opinion against the vet.

Yes it is typical that the initial VA raters ignore or downplay the private doctors IMO thus forcing the vet to win his claim on a drawn out five year appeal. No coincidence there.

From my experience and experience of many others many private and VA treating doctors and specialist for all sorts of reasons including laziness will not get involved in helping vets with nexus medical opinions to help their disabilities claims.

My late family doctor of 50 years did write nexus letters on my behalf but of course the GD VA raters completely ignored his opinion.  Now some veterans are fortunate enough to have a veteran friendly private or VA doctor that do the DBQs and nexus letters for them and some of these vets bragg about this a great deal on another forum. Typical 

I find many apologist for the VA claims system are full of BS.  My information is not legal advice as I am not an attorney, paralegal, or VSO.

[brokensoldier244th]

Why should you have to pay more for an opinion? It's their job.

[Vync]

@brokensoldier244th They may have been a victim of some VA C&P examiners doing a poor and inadequate job. I know I had a couple of C&P exams last year that were really sloppy and I'm planning to appeal on that basis.

[Dustoff1970]

I think brokensoldier has missed the whole point of my post on the subject of non treating private doctors IMOs.

Except for family doctor whose a long time friend I don't know of many private civilian doctors that do anything for free unless they happen to be your paid for treating doctor collecting payment from you or your insurance to provide you with health care and many of them will still not provide nexus letters or DBQs.  This should be as clear as a glass bell.  Good grief.