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First claim questions

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XIbodybag

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So back story, i spent 6 years in the guard including several combat deployments to iraq.  I got out in 2013 and neglected filing a claim.  In november of 2019 i filed my first claim for PTSD, TBI, Tinnitus, knee pain, back pain and secondary to PTSD i claimed anxiety, depression and sleep disturbance.  I filed a FDC.  In hindsight now i know the secondary claims should have come later. 

 

Long story short in January they changed it to a standard claim and set me up for a C&P for PTSD only....C&P was through VES and went well.  I have a CIB and arcom w v device so my stressor is confirmed automatically from what ive been reading?  Ive been calling the 1000 number since january asking about the status and they give me the same answer.  "You're in the development stage of blah blah blah" and that they are waiting on paperwork from the national guard.  When i ask them what paperwork to see if i can produce it they tell me its internal to the VA and they cant see what it is? Lol.  They've requested 4 times apparently over the past 5 months.  Anyways i finally get it out of them 3 days ago that they need some type of personnel records but no specifics.  Luckily i find hrc.army.mil and login with my premium login account and every personnel record from my enlistment, to my seperation from service is in there. 

 

The thing is why are they playing dumb and not telling me specifically what was needed?  Also why only a C&P for ptsd?  My knee complaints have been documented through active duty dr visits and va dr visits.  Also no C&P for tinnitus? Isnt that a given for infantry combat veterans?  Im so disillusioned with this whole process so far.  Going on 210 days and counting....

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12 hours ago, XIbodybag said:

Im so disillusioned with this whole process so far.  Going on 210 days and counting....

This is a joke right? You have seen the people on here that served back in the 60's trying to get benefits, right. I have stuff that is going back to 1985. 210 days? I am going to have to wait longer than that for my C-file. 🤣 Take a deep breath and relax. This site wasn't even in existence when I needed it in 1985.

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On 6/11/2020 at 7:47 AM, XIbodybag said:

Okay thanks for the info!  I just called the 1000 number again and the representative said that even though i uploaded the whole personnel file and medical records that the va will continue to request it until the government agency they are requesting it from provides an adequate response.  Does that make sense?  Does that hold true even if i upload it on my own? I should add the va has requested 4 times now with the first request being in january.

Not that im aware of, unless it has to do with the statute that says we have to get a negative response from the federal side of things. Most vets don't have the entirety of their personnel and medical records, so we have to request them anyway. We can mark the uploaded evidence as received and then request someone internally to look at it and determine what to do about the pending federal request. I can tell you that unless someone is homeless, terminal, or has one of the special issues like AO etc that there is no one working in the NPRC right now for records requests. I can also tell you that 'no' response is not a 'negative' response per statute. Thats probably why they keep requesting it. Id talk to your VSO or send a letter in directly on a 21-4138 and ask them "hey, I already submitted all this on X date, can we kill the federal records request.....". I don't know if you can waive that activity or not, but its worth a shot, especially if it comes from you and not one of the phone people. I don't think they have any horsepower to do much other than take notes about the phone call and upload it. 

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My apologies for not being sensitive but you just filed your claim November 2019.   IMHO(In My Humble Opinion) and in my experience, you don't want to rush VA.  The wheels turn very slow but they do turn.  By rushing VA, you may get a decision that you don't like. On average it takes about six months to a years to get a records response.  With this COVID-19 it may take a little longer but be forewarned that you don't want an incomplete decision. You also don't want to ask VA to cancel your records request unless you are 100% sure that you have your entire records. VA denied one of my claims and informed me that they had requested and received all of my military and personal records until I found out that VA did request my records but only received part of my records and not my entire records. You guessed it right, the pertinent part, the part that proved I had treatment was not included in my records or they were removed and I have to file and appeal that took years to correct. Of course it is your call but I am trying to help you save time and heart ache dealing with VA.    

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Unfortunately, pax, when an Nprc request is sent to saint Louis and returned, we (vsr’s) have no way to know if it’s extant or not. When I do a claim I look in one of a few places depending on when your RAD is, and if you have guard service or reserve, then I look there too. I look at every vamc med center in the database for your name, ss, and dob- all of them. I can only take back what I get at face value. How an I supposed to know if that’s your whole file or not? That depends on everyone from TAP, to RMC, to NPRC , or doctors to log their notes, and then the dictator to have done their jobs and not lost anything.


Don’t get me started on fading, and reading dr handwriting. I KNOW the abbreviations, and what I dont I have a giant list of my own that I have typed up. Still, illegible is illegible. Faded, water marked, double exposed photocopied records- it’s not all just point and click. I love my job but people don’t have any idea what handwritten medical records look like most of the time and doctors only write them for themselves. They MAKE UP abbreviations! There are standard ones, but the list I have of WTF is long and illustrious.

 

Medical records in the civilian world only have to be stored for 5-7 years- they aren’t indefinite, and providers are under no legal requirements to store records longer than that. If people don’t see the doctor every once in awhile, and don’t  notify their old doctor to send their stuff to their new doctor then those records are eventually purged, legally. Honestly we’re kinda lucky that we can have access to at least some of that forever-ish. Digitization is great but it’s not automatic and civvie doctors are under no requirement to go digital. Your medicalAnd personal records Don’t just file you around forever as a civilian. At least with vamc and NPRC i can go back years- IF you registered and went, and IF your clearing unit did their job years ago.

 

 I’m sorry your request didn’t turn out how you wanted without a struggle but that’s why even my dad in the early 2000s told me to bribe, beg, and steal whatever I could of my records and hand carry them out, while making double copies or storing on thumb drives and or cds and mailing those home, and my records were already digitized within a few months of when I got home- I pulled them off ebenefits. (They were complete)  In the 60s when He got out it was hand carry out or depend on radar oreilly to have done his job, and as you know not every s1  was a Radar Oreilly. That’s why we request from both the Fed’s AND you.

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On 6/12/2020 at 2:12 PM, brokensoldier244th said:

Not that im aware of, unless it has to do with the statute that says we have to get a negative response from the federal side of things. Most vets don't have the entirety of their personnel and medical records, so we have to request them anyway. We can mark the uploaded evidence as received and then request someone internally to look at it and determine what to do about the pending federal request. I can tell you that unless someone is homeless, terminal, or has one of the special issues like AO etc that there is no one working in the NPRC right now for records requests. I can also tell you that 'no' response is not a 'negative' response per statute. Thats probably why they keep requesting it. Id talk to your VSO or send a letter in directly on a 21-4138 and ask them "hey, I already submitted all this on X date, can we kill the federal records request.....". I don't know if you can waive that activity or not, but its worth a shot, especially if it comes from you and not one of the phone people. I don't think they have any horsepower to do much other than take notes about the phone call and upload it. 

Well I think your advice may have helped!  1 day after i submitted that letter and 1 week after submitting all my service records they closed the request out.  Now they requested two more C&P exams for the tinnitus and the TBI contentions.  Any idea why they did not do them back when they did the one for PTSD in February?  I heard they generally do C&P exams for PTSD and TBI during the same exam....or is that false information?  Were they waiting on corroborating evidence from my personnel records before requesting those exams?  Still no C&P for my knee or back pain though even though they are documented in my medical records from active duty.  Does that mean that those contentions will be denied?

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No, it just means (usually) that they are still reviewing the medical records for instances of the contention in svc, and current treatment- we have to eyeball all of it to connect the dots to get exam approval, and while records from VAMCs are digital files and can be CTRL-F searched, STRs, and a lot of private records are just pdf scans. SO CTRL-F works minimally to not at all, meaning we have to go in and scroll through every page looking for instances of trtmnt, or occurrences, whatever, and try to read Dr. writing and abbreviations. 

 

Its not just in service events and trtmnt we look for, we have to also connect it to current trtmnt, and electronically label and annotate it so the Dr's see it. VA doctors can see your claim records, contract examiners CANT, so we label it all so that relevant parts and highlights gets scanned or copied to be sent to the contractor. Raters can see all of it, so the annotations help them, also, so they don't have to go through every single thing, though most of them do (at least thats what the regs and M21 say is supposed to happen). I don't rate, though I just try to justify as much as I can to get people to exams, and I take copious notes and annotations on med records to build as much as I can. Im one of the slower VSRs when it comes to how many cases I work. Partly because im new and still learning to read some of the weird forms in your STRs but also because I spend a lot of time per file- usually an hour or more at least. Really thorny ones, several . 

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