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Compensation Tips

All Tips Submitted By Veterans

TIP: In many cases, it may be important for a veteran to obtain their own medical expert report that links their current disability to military service.  Oftentimes, this means getting expert medical information from a civilian medical professional. To substantially increase the chances of winning their disability claim, a savvy veteran will show documentation to VA that a written opinion from a civilian medical provider clearly links their current disability to military service.

   

   

   

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

        

TIP: Many first-time applications are denied.  Far too often, veterans give up at that point, thinking it is impossible to gain benefits from a system designed to deny them benefits.  Don’t think that way and don’t ever give up!  Most first-time cases are denied simply because the application for benefits was insufficient. Perhaps, one or two key elements were missing from the application, or the application missed a deadline.  Either way, most first-time cases are denied on minor technicalities.  Find out what’s missing and re-submit your application.  Hint:  For the next round, some veterans find a very good accredited VSO or hire an expert disability attorney to file on their behalf.

       

TIP:  One thing that’s really helped me and others get results from our disability claims is the brain power of many different outlooks.  We have a team of 12 veterans working together to support each other.  Prior to us submitting our disability claims we would meet weekly at each other’s homes to go over our paperwork.  We would pick each other’s brains to find out best approaches, best strategies, best VSO to work with, best time to submit claim, etc. and many other ideas I think helped us all.  Long story short, all 12 of us are 70% service-connected and better.  Working as a team really works.

   

TIP:  First, please keep in the forefront of your thinking that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rating specialists maintain huge caseloads.  Each case is unique and some cases have as much as 20,000+ pages.  That is a lot of paperwork to handle for one person.  In addition to the large document files, VA rating specialist are under immense pressure to grade as many files as possible in the shortest amount of time.  With that kind of volume to pour over and pressure to perform, it is no wonder the job of a VA rating specialist is short-lived.  Also, you can probably see how and why so many VA rating specialists miss information related to a veterans disability claim.  Not to make excuses for the rating specialists, but, most people would find it challenging to handle extra large caseloads accurately and coupled with crushing pressure that VA rating specialists have to handle every day.

     

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

       

   

With that said, one way you can assists the rating specialist and help see your case toward potential success is to perform an FRS.

   

You’d be surprised how many potential compensation qualifying disabilities you could discover when using a good plan and the right strategy to make discoveries.  One such strategy is the Family Records Session (FRS).

     

Using HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) policy as a guide, before starting an FRS, you may want to make sure you only use people you trust with the sensitive information in your medical and military records.

    

After giving consent to family members, either verbally or in person, you can implement FRS as a way to gather as much service-related information as possible.  By the way, I’ve taught this model to a few veteran friends and they were as successful as I was in finding additional disabilities.  Use my three-step process to make discoveries.

      

Step 1.  Start with your service medical records.  Let’s say you have 1000 pages in your service medical records, and three trusted family or friends (you make 4) to help you scour your service medical records.  With four people looking through your service medical records, you want to equally divide the work between four people.  That means each person should have four small piles of documents, each at 250 pages.  The smaller amount of documents will help each person prod through their pile carefully and with laser focus.

      

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

     

       

Step 2.  Direct your helpers to categorize documents in separate smaller piles.  For example, place all dental records in one pile, annual physical records in another pile, shot records in another pile, counseling in a separate pile and so on.

     

Step 3.  Direct your helpers to go through each pile looking for any in-service event that required medical attention of any sort. 

For example, one veteran discovered he had been given 7 stitches above his left ear during a military exercise.  The veteran was hit in the head by an M-16 that caused a laceration above his left ear.  He forgot about the incident, but, he has a scare above his left ear resulting in a “battle scare.”  He put in a claim for service-connected scarring and was award compensation.

   

Using my three-step process will help you discover events you forgot happened or events you somehow missed.  Once you have every piece of information you can your helpers can find, make copies of each document and give them to your VSO.  Instruct your VSO to submit the documents on your behalf.

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