Refusing C and P exams is not recommended

[broncovet]

Advising Veterans to refuse a c and p exam "is not" endorsed by hadit. 

Instead, it is this moderator's opinion that Veterans should do their best to attend C and P exams, unless there is a compelling reason, such as being in the hospital, or the death of a family member.   

If a C and P exam is impossible/impractical to attend, the Veteran should contact the VA to reschedule the exam for a more opportune time/date, at his/her earliest convenience

Make no mistake:  refusing an exam is grounds for a denial, and this could be difficult, time consuming and costly to overcome.  

38 CFR 3.655 is important enough to warrant a reminder:

Quote

3.655 Failure to report for Department of Veterans Affairs examination.

(a) General. When entitlement or continued entitlement to a benefit cannot be established or confirmed without a current VA examination or reexamination and a claimant, without good cause, fails to report for such examination, or reexamination, action shall be taken in accordance with paragraph (b) or (c) of this section as appropriate. Examples of good cause include, but are not limited to, the illness or hospitalization of the claimant, death of an immediate family member, etc. For purposes of this section, the terms examination and reexamination include periods of hospital observation when required by VA.

...this regulation goes on to note this applies to both a NEW claim, and/or an existing claim (possible reduction).  

If you refuse a c and p exam, you just gave VA an "iron clad" denial reason, that will be difficult, costly, and time consuming to over come, that is, if you can overcome the denial at all.  

Source:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/38/3.655

 

Hadit is not responsible for the content or opinions of its posters.   Hadit's policy prohibits members from advising Veterans to violate regulations or applicable laws.  

 

[Lemuel]

Fortunately for me, my over 10,000 two-sided pages hard copy I received after my own hard copy became paper Mache in a flood have references to the material I believe was shredded at Pittsburg VARO.  In addition, I was able to get copies of the internal memos from VARO Denver that detail my difficulties with hearings during my time living homeless in the US between my home in Japan while trying to get my hearing completed.  And then the memos showed up in the RBA though they were not in the copy of my hard copy file sent to me that was extremely page duplicated with orphan pages missing their original first pages and dates, front and back pages not matching at all, etc.  I believe the copying company in Denver padded their bill by just rerunning stacks through the copy machine.

Definitely you need to keep your own copy of both your medical records and C&P file.  And it is impossible to rebuild either if you do not have your own concurrent copy. 

I learned this in 1987 when my hard copy medical file could not be located for C&P examinations after I wrote an adverse letter to VA West Regional about the Chief of Psychiatry's arbitrary and capricious changing of PTSD diagnosis to adjustment disorders or anxiety reactions. 

He was forced into retirement and I believe he was the last to have my medical file. 

A copy had been sent to CA Rehab in 1985 so everything was replaced as a copy of a copy.  Some Items were replaced that had been sent to VARO before the file disappeared.  I am still missing a lot of evidence of the "careful clinical follow-up for seizures" ordered in 1985.  Some was obtained by interview by the SSA investigator in 1991.

Love that DRO-DC summary of the evidence for my extra-schedular TDIU.  He pulled a lot of things out of the CAVES report that I had missed and dismissed in my stuporous review of it after I first laid eyes upon it in my file.  Can't shred that and get away with it because another copy is available from the SSA.

I have been unable to get a copy of my hard copy medical file predating conversion and during conversion to digital.  Must be in the 5 plus mile high stack of unscanned documents found by VA OIG.  Needed to rebuild what was shredded at VARO Pittsburg.  Wonder how many more had problems like that from VARO Pittsburg either when they were in their area or while Pittsburg was handling claims of veterans who were overseas?  We should get together and support each other's claims of the mishandling and disappearance of critical documents. It is a lot harder to maintain your files while homeless or overseas.

[john999]

When you file a CUE and it gets to the Vet Court of Appeals everything gets vague.  The VA just has it all over us.  Those rules allow them to run wild while you must prove all.