The VA updates rating criteria for all disabilities — First update in more than 70 years to improve benefit delivery…
If you’ve ever wondered how the VA rates disabilities for compensation, you’ll be interested to know that after more than 70 years the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are updating the federal regulations for the rating criteria that is used to make these rating decisions.
The VA Schedule for Rating Disabilities, often referred to as the “VASRD” or rating schedule, directs claims processors on how to assess the severity of disabilities related to military service. While the VA has routinely updated parts of the VASRD, for the first time since 1945, the VA is updating the entire rating schedule to more accurately reflect modern medicine.
Since 2009, subject matter experts, including physicians, reviewed each of the 15 body systems that make up the VASRD. This effort is part of the VA’s continued commitment to improving the delivery of disability compensation benefits to Veterans and modernizing their systems.
On Sept. 10, 2017, the first of 15 body systems will be modernized. Disabilities related to dental and oral conditions will contain updated medical terms, include diagnostic codes for conditions previously rated under other conditions, add or change disability levels where needed, and combine some diagnostic codes. No existing dental or oral conditions were removed.
If you have filed a claim or have an appeal pending for a dental or oral condition before Sept. 10, 2017, the VA will consider both the old and new rating criteria when making a decision. All claims for dental or oral conditions received by the VA on or after Sept. 10 will be rated under the new rating criteria.
It’s also important to know that if you are already service-connected for a dental or oral condition and submit a claim for increase, your disability rating may increase (or decrease) based on the new rating criteria. However, the VA will not change your disability rating just because of the update to the rating criteria.
In the coming months, more body systems will be updated until all 15 are modernized, ensuring the VA provides the most accurate ratings for disability compensation claims based on modern medicine.
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Well this article is more than curious to us since we haven't known the Raters in the VARO Claims Division to EVER be using the VASRD diagnostic codes AT ALL. I have been in the system since the year 1972 and I have put on legal fights with the Raters in the New York City Office in Manhattan to start using the VASRD. If I send in my claims papers with the VASRD diagnostic codes already matched up and identified, then the Rater turns around and ignores the VASRD codes and rephrases my medical conditions as "a stomach condition" or "a respiratory condition" to create the FALSE illusion on paper that I have never already been diagnosed by a VA doctor. The truth is, all of my medical conditions are the findings and conclusions from a SURGERY so there is no mistake on my part. It's a matter of taking the very codes and diagnosis conditions that are posted on my Patient Discharge Summaries from the hospital, and then matching them up to the codes in the VASRD. The Raters completely work OUTSIDE the VASRD codes and my own VA case is living proof of it. The Raters first falsify the case into some vague generalization, and then they issue "exams" by "contractor doctors" (who are NOT the same as our VA treatment doctors) to take the falsified Rater wording and rephrase it back again to what the VA surgery paper already says at the time I filed my claims paper. If this looks to you like a dog chasing it's own tail, then it really is. This press article is a hoax and a sham. -- Sue Frasier, Army 1970, National Veterans Activist.
The VA's procedure is a patchwork of incompetence and rigamarole. I'm sure there are some really fine people doing work for va hospitals on the ground, too. But the word games and legalese bs that the paper pushers put our vets through is a deliberate and calculated scheme to play "try and collect" while they wait for those who deserve care to just die on their own. I'm done hearing that it's an accidental, chaotic administration full of errors and backlogs. Forget the news, talk to a vet. Not the American legion Golden boys who they interview on local TV. Ask someone whose application for claims got "lost" or who got put into a 30 year purgatory of paperwork. This is no accident. It's a game of "try and collect.". It's shameful.
That's spot on. I spent a year in military hospitals and got 10%. It should have been 80%. Took years to change. Then the county VA refused to file (Shasta County, CA). Criminal.
I applied for chemical exposure. It was denied however my hysterectomy was approved in less than 4 months. I didn't ask for that it was listed in my past surgical history. I was very surprised.