As a business owner, keeping informed about the finer points of employment law is important. If you're getting ready to hire your first employees, you need to be sure that you understand exactly what you can and cannot do. Don't risk getting yourself into legal trouble by asking the wrong question at the interview or making an off-hand comment that's considered legally unacceptable. I created this site to give you the basics of employment law expectations. I hope that the information here helps you to understand what you should and shouldn't do as you're interviewing and hiring your first staff members.
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Making Best Use Of VA Claim Delay And Appeal Time
Irene Robertson
Waiting for a response from the Veterans Affairs (VA) claim system can be a time-consuming and worrying ordeal. For many veterans, there isn't a lot of useful information that comes back from the VA, which means many attempts at progress are halted. It's hard to get safe and accurate information that the VA needs if you don't know what they're looking for, but an overview of VA expectations can give you a better idea of the kinds of statements and evidence you'll need.
The VA Only Has What Your Give
One of the most common reasons for VA claim denial is a lack of relevant information. This isn't necessarily because the VA claim requirements are hard to understand at a basic level, but because a lot of assumptions combined with missing information can lead to weaker claims. In some cases, difficult claims may be avoided.
The VA does not scan and analyze your entire medical record. In fact, unless you submit specific parts of your medical record, the VA will not be reading much of your medical history from the military. Although it's true that transferring through different military bases and medical centers usually results in a careful review of relevant information, you need to remember that the VA is not part of the military.
There are both security and administrative reasons for the VA not having immediate access to your records, but the main thing to take away is that you'll need to do the work of sifting through your medical record. Sound a bit daunting? It can be, especially if you have a long history of injury and a big medical record.
That said, service-members with lots of medical information aren't preparing their claims alone--or if they are, success isn't very likely. It takes a representative to be effective when there's a lot of information to look through. During your wait time, consider contacting a personal injury lawyer to review what you've sent and to supplement the claim by sending more, professionally-prepared information.
Enhancing A Claim's Service-Connected Strength
You need to prove that your claim is somehow related to military service. Since the VA only provides compensation for injuries and other conditions related to military service, your claim or appeal needs to pass a service-connection test.
Service-connection details how your claim or appeal is related to the military. To dispel more assumptions, service connection is not combat connection--combat connection is a different issue that can have an impact on other claim details, but isn't relevant at this point. It doesn't matter if you were in or out of combat, or not related to combat at all; being in the military is all that matters.
To prove your service-connection, you'll need historical information showing that your condition was indeed part of your military service. A medical record entry is a good start, but not all veterans report the injuries to medical. Some injuries may not become noticeable until after you've had time to shift from a high-paced military career to the slower, less active pace of the military.
If you don't have documentation from military service, a personal injury attorney may be necessary. The attorney can not only research deeper parts of your military past and interview previous medical staff (or others from your past), but connect you with civilian medical professionals who can identify possible causes for your condition and how likely the condition could be connected to the military.
Contact a personal injury attorney or visit a website like http://gomezmaylaw.com/ as soon as possible to get some extra work done for your pending VA claim or appeal.
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