Being injured in the military is not always easily taken care of. Unless you were given a medical discharge with a large stack of official paperwork, a lot of the injuries sustained during military service may require a long effort of gathering evidence and arguing your case. If you've been dealing with denials or have suffered because of the long wait times at Veterans Affairs facilities around the country, consider a few ways that dedicated information gathering and legal assistance can help your claim succeed faster.
Why Are Legitimate Injuries Denied?
VA funds are designed to help veterans in need. The disability compensation system is specifically in place to help veterans with service-connected conditions.
A service-connected condition is any condition that could have been caused during your time in the military. The label also applies to pre-existing conditions that have become severely worse because of military service, such as eyesight problems or being exposed to an allergy that you never knew you had.
In order to prevent fraudulent veterans from claiming money and medical services for conditions they don't have (or conditions that happened after military service), the VA has a fairly strict system of claims analysis that can sometimes delay claims and deny legitimate injuries that don't have enough evidence.
If you're claiming a condition, you'll need some kind of proof that the problem existed during military service. Word of mouth is unfortunately not enough; documentation in the form of medical record entries or relevant service record entries are key.
Medical record entries can show that you were treated for your condition or at least symptoms related to the condition. You could also have other issues that may have seemed unrelated before, but can be traced to your current problem by a skilled medical professional.
The service record may not have medical evidence, but it can show that you were involved in events that could have caused your current condition. City duty areas and specific incidents such as bombings or Agent Orange exposure can be strong pieces of evidence for mysterious side effects years after your military career ends.
Support Your Claim With Legal Assistance
If you don't have direct proof that links your current condition to your medical records, or if you have a lot of potential evidence that doesn't seen to make a connection, it may be time to bring in a professional. A personal injury attorney has more experience with searching for connections in different medical reports, which can lead to a much more structured and likely-to-succeed claim.
Context is everything in an injury claim. You may have the right documents, but the linkage between the document and your injury may not be obvious without experience and an explanation. An attorney can examine similar cases, find phrases and techniques that were successful and apply them to your claim.
The attorney can also enlist the assistance of medical professionals who know where to look for specific connections. If you're trying to figure out how a specific back or head problem could be related to a few different medical reports, a civilian medical team can examine you to build a current medical report that supports your claim. This can be done while you're waiting for the VA to respond.
Contact a personal injury law firm such as Salerno Terrence Law Office to start on an appeal or to bring more attention to your delayed claim in progress.
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