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VA Medical Records

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KC3

Question

I am getting ready to submit an additional claim for an increase with a current condition and I see various doctors at  veterans clinic. 

Will the C&P examiner,  VA regional office/VA rater and etc. have access to these or do I need to copy and submit in claim? 

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Exactly- when we request VAMC we see and pull everything relevant to whatever the last date we have in your Efolder forward. So, that is something we repeat on each claim- to see if there are more records, or if you changed VAMCs, whatever. When we request from NPRC we *hope* they send us everything but they are scanning paper records - we have no way of knowing if what they send us is complete. Thats why we re-request, and why sometimes after months or years new things are found that weren't in your Efolder before.

STRs have a certificate of completion certification (form 2963) that comes with them so, in that regard, we assume STRs are complete. When requesting from private doctors or Federal agencies (NCIS, CID, Forestry, VHA, whatever) for investigation records, police reports, employment, etc- we get whatever they send us. Private doctors sometimes send us nothing at all- they aren't obligated to do so. Some charge money- we don't pay for records- so we'll get a reject from them.

Sometimes if your date range on your 21-526ez, or the 21-4142a isn't right they will reject it saying that "the dates of treatment don't match". Many of them won't fulfill open queries for dates, aka, you list the last day you were treated and write "I think Ive been treated there for something like 4 years.....". If we guess, and pick a date 4 yrs prior (01/01/xxxx) to present sometimes they won't even do that.

That's why, while we CAN request them, we ask you to do so also because some of them ignore us completely. Its not a delay tactic, or a 'we lost/didn't consider' records issue every time- sometimes they just don't send us things that you know you have. Then vets get angry at us like we're deliberately sabotaging their claim because they called their doctor and got records with no problem. "see!! I have them/they had them, You (va) were supposed to get them and didn't......".

Duty to assist requires 2 attempts to get them- if they ignore us but don't ignore you and you don't send us what you have thats not really an issue that we can correct. We didnt screw up your claim, your doctor did by not sending what we asked for. 

This is my day, daily. 

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9 minutes ago, brokensoldier244th said:

Some charge money- we don't pay for records- so we'll get a reject from them.

I want to avoid that, somehow. In that case, can I upload the records I have from private doctors?

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Yes, always. Scan them to a PDF and upload them through VA.gov for your claim. Personally I prefer named large PDFs for each provider- I can scan through them all at one time. Some veterans upload a single page at a time unlabeled. They show up as "unknown" in the subject when the scan comes in and we have to open every page and re-label it something descriptive so others will know what it is. If I find a grouping of stuff like that I usually download it all, open Adobe, merge them all together and rename it, and then re-upload it as a single file. I probably spend an hour or two a day doing stuff like this instead of actually reading through it- because if I don't the next person is going to have to do the same thing 1 pg at a time. 

Edited by brokensoldier244th
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11 minutes ago, brokensoldier244th said:

Duty to assist requires 2 attempts to get them- if they ignore us but don't ignore you and you don't send us what you have thats not really an issue that we can correct. We didnt screw up your claim, your doctor did by not sending what we asked for. 

Ah ha. Ok then...

12 minutes ago, brokensoldier244th said:

This is my day, daily. 

Lol... thanks for all you've done here.

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