A special board established by Congress to review and raise any low-ball disability ratings awarded to injured or ailing military members needs to quadruple its number of doctors.
That’s the opinion of Michael LoGrande, president of the Defense Department’s Physical Disability Board of Review, who said it’s the only way for a timely review of the rising number of cases.
He said the board has received only 876 applications during the last 10 months, dealing with 235 cases so far. It has recommended higher disability ratings for 136 veterans, or 58 percent of cases it has reviewed.
The potential pool of applicants is estimated at 77,000, LoGrande said, so applications received to date represent just over 1 percent of the former service members eligible for review.
A recommendation of a 30 percent disability could allow veterans to gain retirement status from their branch of service. That means eligibility for a lifetime annuity, health benefits for the retiree and his or her family, and military base privileges including discount shopping.
LoGrande said the three military physicians first assigned to the board, one of whom has retired, aren’t nearly enough for the workload ahead. It will need at least 12 more to comply with a lawsuit-induced agreement the Defense Department made to expedite rating reviews of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress, when discharged.
LoGrande predicts the services won’t be able to find that many doctors for the disability review board, particularly in wartime. So the likely solution will be for the Defense Department to contract for the services of civilian physicians.
“We will work with the secretary of defense’s office to ensure we get the proper manpower and resources necessary to continue to adjudicate on a reasonable basis,” LoGrande said. He added, “If I were an applicant I would want to get a response within 10 months. That’s not unreasonable.”
The review board’s work is “very physician intensive,” he said.
“In the first six months we were able to do about 31 cases a month. … Our production is down since then to 22 to 25 cases a month because of the turnover that we’ve had,” said LoGrande.
The review board, he added, is one vehicle “by which an individual can be made whole by the process. And we will do that. If the individual was diagnosed with (traumatic stress), they should have been placed on the temporary disability retirement list for a period of six months. Subsequent to that, they should have been afforded the opportunity for another exam.”
The risk to the veteran of using the Congressional review board versus seeking disability review from the Army, Navy or Air Force for correction of military records, is that, by law, decisions can’t be appealed within the Defense Department. So physicians use great care in reviewing these records, LoGrande said.
“Our physicians take darn near eight hours to review each case,” he said. As an Air Force civilian, LoGrande is responsible for running the board for the Defense Department. But LoGrande also is an Air Force Reserve colonel.
“I’m dedicated to making sure we do this right,” he said. “We owe it to (these disabled veterans). The least we can do is to give them a fair shake and be honest and straight forward about it.”
Applications are found online at: tinyurl.com/PDBRapps.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Michael Parker, an advocate for disabled veterans, recently described how a former soldier saw the review board raise his stress rating temporarily to 50 percent. But after six months on the temporary disabled list, the rating fell to 10 percent, denying the soldier disability retirement, even though he is rated 70 percent by the VA.
LoGrande declined to comment on any specific case. But he said the review board must base its decision on documents and exams from time of discharge. It uses the most favorable information available to help individuals, he said, including past VA exams.
Traumatic stress cases, he said, “are complex and we’re dealing with people’s lives. And with some of these cases, it is tragic. If we believe the documentation is there to right the wrong, we will do it. But if the medical documentation supports the original diagnosis, we are going to make that decision as well. We are in a tough position. But we’re not a candy store.”
To comment, send e-mail to milupdate@aol.com or write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111.
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