Just retired from the AF in August. Standard part of the process is filing for disability for any service related permanent damages sustained. Filed my paperwork in September. Just checked the status on it and the “projected claim completion date” is May 2016.
May of 2016…
It’s mundane, somewhat pointless, so I posted it here.
What a clown show the VA is. Lol. I feel sorry for the guys that are seriously busted up and depending on disability money to survive.
2016??? Good Lord. Perhaps they’re padding the time it’s truly going to require, so if it’s completed sooner they look really efficient? Kind of like Scotty on Star Trek?
Disability completion times are a mixed bag. My mom had the last in a series of strokes, and she was approved for disability within 3-4 months. I had ongoing mental health issues over the course of years, and I was approved within a year (after filing an appeal through a lawyer). A friend of mine has both physical and emotional problems, lived in a half-way house for awhile, and just now got approved. I swear it must have been like 3-4 years for him.
My advice is to complete any forms you get, make copies, and send the forms back on time. You may want to call the office you’re sending them to, to confirm they’ve received them. Return all related phone calls as quickly as possible. And try to be polite when dealing with them, even if it’s frustrating.
Good luck!
Not that it helps you in the interim, but your eventual award will be back-dated, right? Otherwise, that’s especially brutal.
I am retired Air Force and have a service-connected disability as determined by the VA’s standards. When I retired back in 2000, it took (counts on fingers) about 6 1/2 months after my retirement date for the VA to make their determination as to whether I did indeed have a disability that was connected to my service and to what level that disability reached (30%, in my case). And this was with me submitting all the required paperwork at least 2 months before my retirement date, and maybe as much as 4 or 5 months beforehand (for a total of maybe 8 to 11 months).
In the first week of September 2013, after about a year of urging from my physicians, I submitted the required paperwork to have my disability level re-evaluated. Near the end of May 2014, the VA notified me that their re-evaluation had raised my level of disability to 50%. This is the magic number that allows me (and anyone with 50% or above) to receive full military retirement pay and full VA disability compensation pay. Below that, one receives only partial pay for both.
I stress again that the VA (not me and not my physicians) made this determination based on medical records and other relevant documents. This notification documentation then goes to DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) so that that office can raise my monthly military retirement pay appropriately and conduct an audit to determine if I’m owed any back-pay (which I am, all the way back to early September of last year, and from both sources).
From the day I received VA notification of my increased disability rating in the mail to the day I received a lump sum payment from DFAS in my bank account was about 3 1/2 weeks. Again, note that DFAS was the agency that conducted the audit (as decreed by government regulation and law), whatever that may mean, but I’m thinking it wasn’t a rubber-stamping–someone had to figure out how much was owed, taxes that would be taken out, etc. This audit was then forwarded to the VA, who will use it to determine the amount of back-pay the VA owes me.
Sounds simple, eh? Open and shut. After all, the VA just spent several months evaluating my case already, yes? So, one would think it would be a simple matter of reviewing the DFAS audit and the issuing of the appropriate back-pay. After all, the monthly VA pay I now receive was raised appropriately right away, so the VA accounting arm was on the ball in that regard.
Nope. After waiting 2 months with no word, I called my VA regional headquarters to make inquiries. I was told it would be at least 10 months (from my initial notification) before I would hear about the back-pay issue. I was dumbfounded at the wait and did a little online research. Seems that, yep, my case was put on the back end of the VA’s current backlog. Disability evaluations and accounting determinations are part of the same workload, I guess, done by the same agents.
I’ll stop to say right here that I know I am blessed. My particular disability allows me to live a mostly-problem-free life. I am receiving government assistance from not 1 but 2 government agencies, and unless the government collapses, this is unlikely to change in my lifetime.
My online research (take this with a grain of salt, as I did) related that in the past few years, the amount of workers thrown at the disability evaluation backlog has increased seven-fold, while the backlog itself has, in the same amount of time, actually doubled. There have been stories in the news of incompetence and worse at the highest levels in the VA, to include medical malfeasance as an ongoing way of doing business.
Apparently, all I or anyone can do is shake my head in disbelief and wait. 
Pay will be based on the effective date. Usually that means the day of application (unless there was no medical treatment sought for the problem before submitting the application for disability coverage.) If the application was submitted within a year of leaving active duty the effective date slides back to that date.
The VA is such a joke.
The VA, at considerable expense, flew me from Germany to Ft. Bragg as part of my MEB/PEB process, so I’d have my proposed disability rating when I separated from the Army. I spent a week being poked and prodded and examined and scanned.
When I got out, about nine months later, I discovered that none of the information that the VA used to give me my VA rating actually gets entered into the VA’s EMR system! I knew I’d have to see a doctor to get my Army prescriptions reissued through the VA, but I didn’t expect I’d have to waste fifteen minutes of a doctor’s time going through what meds I’m on and why when, less than a year earlier, I had been assessed for precisely those conditions, by the VA.
You’d also think that when they were rolling out EMR for the DoD - which happened way after the VA had gone digital - that they would have come up with a system that could at least talk to the VA’s software. You be wrong, of course.
My husband got fed up with the VA years ago. His left shoulder was messed up when he was in the Navy. He had surgery, but it didn’t fix it, so he was medically discharged. The arm pops out of the socket on its own sometimes, and he can do it himself if he wants to.
The VA docs examined him on at least 2 occasions and declared he had no disability. So for the last 30 years, he’s just dealt with it. Thanks for your service, now go away…
Sweet Jesus! I’ve heard the VA had some bad delays, but 1.5 years?
Is there, like, 1 guy processing claims for the entire country? And he only works part time? :dubious:
Sounds about right. From my initial submission to my letter with a decision it took about 25 months. I even made a pit thread about it.
What really pissed me off was when I called to VA to talk to a counselor.
Ok, so you have an Iraq campaign veteran saying, “Hey, I’d really like to talk to someone.”
You also have said veteran’s doctor saying, “Hey, you should probably talk to someone.”
You probably shouldn’t say something like, “Ok, well, our nearest time someone can call you (not even an appointment to see someone face to face, just call), is in about three/four weeks. Is that ok?”
“Support the troops” my ass.