Appreciate the reply! What setting were you in during your deployment?
At sea, in the Navy, part of an amphibious battle group.
So the psychiatrist and general surgeon were both on a ship? That's incredible. I didn't even know that is possible.
On the big ships---the aircraft and amphibious/helicopter carriers--Yes. The smaller ships do not, but you can transfer a patient form the smaller to the larger ship. That's the blue Navy construct at least. Ground forces have similar setups with field hospitals, etc.
This is all very interesting to learn about. It seems like psychiatrists have to do a lot of gatekeeping for people seeking a medevac and/or a psychiatric diagnosis (this is obviously not to say that all soldiers/sailors are doing this for secondary gain). Is there a lot of resentment towards psychiatrists?
Can't thank you enough for your insight. I have no experience with the military, so any bit of information is valuable.
Quick question for you, if someone is administratively separated for a personality disorder, do they still get a disability pension of some kind?
Administrative separation is not subject to disability processing from DoD. The member can still go to the VA and file claims if they want and that's on the VA to give them service connection or not. They won't get it for personality disorder but VA dishes out PTSD diagnosis like candy so they can still get disability compensation from them after separation from active duty.
Thank you! My current understanding of military disability benefits is as follows. Is this correct?
I’m Air Force so other branches may be a little different as far as what criteria needs to be met for medical retirement.
Thank you SO much for this detailed explanation. Option 1 (being medically discharged) is more complex than I thought. No wonder people would prefer this option because it automatically grants them a VA service connection percentage as well. Maybe the total compensation can even exceed the max VA service connection payouts, which would make this option more attractive.
For people that get 100% service connection it comes out to about 4K per month in non taxable income plus healthcare for life. For option 2, unfortunately the VA doesn’t have access to the DoD records even though we can see their records. I think the backlash is what they’re afraid of so seemingly over diagnose stuff and dish out money for them. It’s sad because there are some who actually need it and meet criteria for it. But plenty don’t.
The patients are supposed to get their records before out processing and bring them to the VA but I’m not aware of the VA providers having access to DoD EMR (I could be totally wrong about this though). Does CPRS have some kind of back door way to view AHLTA/Genesis records? In AHLTA and now the new EMR Genesis, we can see VA records through something called joint legacy viewer (JLV).
Yeah from what I've seen it looks like there isn't much of a record review done. Whether that's because they don't have ample access to all the records, don't have adequate time to review the records, or just choose not to review anything I don't know lol. I wasn't sure if VA had access to JLV like we do. It's been a while since I used CPRS and I don't think I used JLV when I did have access. But I was in a combined mil/civ residency and had access to AHLTA at the time anyway. Now on active duty I do have JLV through genesis (previous access when we had AHLTA). Genesis isn't an upgrade from AHLTA like was promised to us (shocking I know). Agree JLV is terrible to try and conduct record review. Super slow and difficult to find what you're looking for.
Exactly. Zero record review (even of VA records) and just going by whatever the person says because most evaluators just want to get the exam over with the least amount of work. I have been able to view DoD records in JLV, but the records are not viewable if they are prior to the 1990s. It is impossible to make a psychiatric diagnosis based on one meeting without prior records in a situation so plagued by secondary gain. Psychiatry has no other ways of diagnosing besides through history and interview, which is a problem in the information age. It is so easy nowadays to go online and look up what you need to say for the diagnosis and service connection % you are seeking.
Yes! Come work at the VA after you're done. It is a mostly fulfilling experience if you are at a VA with good admin. The VA has outsourced C&P exams to contractors mostly. You won't have to worry about doing them.
That's good to hear lol. I'd say as of right now, VA is at the top of my list of where I'm looking after I separate from active duty.
Wow... I'm sure most evaluators just nod and sign off on the higher SC percentages. I'm honest shocked more people don't take advantage of this.
I wonder what percentage of veterans are service connected 20% or higher....
I found this document that says Veteran Health Administration (VA hospitals and clinical services) costs are around 100 billion a year, at least as of 2020. Veterans Benefits Administration (service connection payments) costs are 130 billion a year. Not as bad as 75% of the budget going to service connection payments, but still over 50% and will probably get higher over the years now that internet and social media has made it very easy to apply successfully.
www.cbo.gov
12.6% is way too low. This data seems to be from self report. If the VA is paying 130 billion a year in service connection benefits, there’s no way only such a small percentage of veterans is receiving it.
About 1/3 have a a disability and 12.6% have a service connected disability. I'm not sure whether that's lower or higher than you thought but it seems like a reasonable number considering the low bar to get a disability rating based on VA guidance. I have 40% for two bum knees, a shoulder, and a wrist. All of the injuries either happened during service or were worsened by them. All have medical documentation obtained when I was in that I provided with my application. Im sure there are plenty of veterans that game the system but they're not in the majority.
About 1/3 have a a disability and 12.6% have a service connected disability. I'm not sure whether that's lower or higher than you thought but it seems like a reasonable number considering the low bar to get a disability rating based on VA guidance. I have 40% for two bum knees, a shoulder, and a wrist. All of the injuries either happened during service or were worsened by them. All have medical documentation obtained when I was in that I provided with my application. Im sure there are plenty of veterans that game the system but they're not in the majority.
I found this document that says Veteran Health Administration (VA hospitals and clinical services) costs are around 100 billion a year, at least as of 2020. Veterans Benefits Administration (service connection payments) costs are 130 billion a year. Not as bad as 75% of the budget going to service connection payments, but still over 50% and will probably get higher over the years now that internet and social media has made it very easy to apply successfully.
VA costs have already grown. I found this document that says in 2017 VHA spent 70 billion and VBA spent 87 billion. In 2000, the total VA budget (VHA and VBA) was only 64 billion. Such a high rate of increase seems unsustainable…
Possible Higher Spending Paths for Veterans' Benefits
To help assess budgetary risks, CBO has projected spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs through 2028 under three scenarios, a modified version of CBO’s baseline and two other scenarios involving more rapid spending growth.
12.6% is way too low. This data seems to be from self report. If the VA is paying 130 billion a year in service connection benefits, there’s no way only such a small percentage of veterans is receiving it.
Yeah, above our paygrade... With the healthcare for life guarantee, I have a feeling VA costs will eventually become comparable to DoD costs (seems to be around 600-700 billion per year lately). Not sure what's going to happen once we get to that point.
