This petition is asking EVERYONE to support our veterans and their families by  mandating by law that the Veterans Affairs Department (VA) to promptly and AUTOMATICALLY provide Compensation and Pension (C&P) exam reports to every veteran who has to go through a C&P exam during the VA benefits claims process.  The issue as anyone who is a veteran going through or having gone through the VA benefit claims process, obtaining your records can seem impossible at times.  

It is absolutely unacceptable that you have to file Privacy Act Requests, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and even file for relief in federal district court to get your records from the VA.  Obtaining a copy of the C&P report that the VA Raters use to approve/deny and rate your claims is essential to being able to determine if the rating determination was done correctly.

The issue is with the complete lack of desire on the VA’s part to provide veteran’s their military records, even when requested via Privacy Act or FOIA channels.  The claims process that is used for a veteran to request compensation and benefits for injuries sustained in or exacerbated by their military service is:

1)  File Claim with VA with documentation

2)  Go to Compensation And Pension Exam (C&P) exam to have VA authorized doctor ascertain nexus and severity of injury and opine as to whether the injury is 50% or more likely or not to be related to military service.  This report is submitted to VA via the internal VA records system Veterans Benefit Management System (VBMS) and in theory is supposed to appear in the veterans Blue Button Medical Records online at MyHealthEVet website portal.

3)  The report, along with all other supporting information is reviewed by VA Rater for decision on service connection, rating, and effective date

4)  VA Rater Supervisor Reviews rating decision and signs off or asks for clarification

5)  Decision is finalized and letter sent to veteran

6)  Veteran receives letter and clock begins to tick to be able to appeal the decision

The problem is within step 2.  .  After a decision letter is generated at step 6, the veteran has a limited time by VA policy to review the decision and determine if they agree with it or not.  In order to do this, they need the C&P report(s) from step 2.  However, once the Compensation and Pension (C&P) exam is completed, the veteran does not automatically get a copy of the report and the VA doesn’t consistently upload the reports to the online Blue Button Medical Records portal that veterans use to access their documents.  Without the C&P report from step 2, the veteran has absolutely no idea as to how the doctor rated their condition, what severity or any other conditions that they may be eligible for benefits on and thus cannot file an appeal without it.  Veterans ask for this information and are usually told by the VA to file a Privacy Act request.  The reason for this is that the VA is not required to legally respond to a Privacy Act request by a certain time so the VA can sit on the request (and they do for months or even more than a year).  The other option is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request which by law, the VA is supposed to respond within 20 business days, but they rarely do and only then to send a letter saying we’ll get to it.  The veteran is then left waiting for months and yes, even over a year before they can get the documents.  Unfortunately for the veteran, this means that their legal ability to appeal the VA benefits decision letter has passed and they are left without any options.  This is also a big concern for many elderly veterans as they pass away before the process can be completed leaving their loved ones in the impossible situation of trying to sort it out.

Without this being a mandate to the VA, veterans will continue to not have the information they need in a timely manner to adjudicate their claims to ensure they have an accurate rating.

We need congress to act now to protect our veterans and ensure they get the benefits and support they so rightly deserve.