Obvious error on supplemental...help please!
My husband just received his denial letter for a supplemental claim filed April 4. There are some crazy errors in it that I've never seen mentioned here before so not sure what to do about it to get it corrected expeditiously.
Issue #1. He was being rated 10% for IBD however, he had some lab work by his treating gasterinterologist recently that ruled out IBD. In the past he's been diagnosed with IBD, colitis, IBS depending on symptoms. With IBD being ruled out, he requested to have his diagnosis changed to IBD as per his treating physician's latest exam.
Evidence submitted were the lab reports and doctor's report from his last exam.
Issue #2 is degenerative arthritis in all four lower major joints, starting with his right knee, which was totally replaced last year. He also had his rip hip totally replaced, and will be having his left joints replaced in the near future. He had no specific injury but he was in towed artillery for 10 years and is trying to service connect through repetitive and joint load-bearing occupational demands.
Evidence submitted was a nexus letter from his treating orthopedic surgeon, list of his occupational duties, a narrative of those occupational duties but with more description and more detailed experiences in the field, performance assessment standards for his MOS from the USMC website, another medical study that defined repetitive and load-bearing activities with matched with the performance assessment standards for artillery.
He had a new C&P exam early last week. The examiner completed four DBQs, including one for scarring from his knee replacement, which he didn't even claim. Not sure why the examiner would provide a scarring DBQ unless she was going to service connect his knee that was replaced.
Forward to today when husband received a denial for everything!
In the evidence considered section there were his four new DBQs, his DD214, his STR and his personal medical records. That's it. Not one single other piece of evidence submitted with the claim is listed.
Here's where it gets even better: When listing the reason for denial of his right knee, left knee and right hip, the rater quoted the opinion of the examiner (verbatim) from his 2025 exam, which this supplemental claim was challenging! Not one single mention of anything from the new exams. The denial letter was completely silent on the exams last week.
Husband (with me tagging along) has an appointment tomorrow morning with his VSO to see how those new DBQs read. In the meantime, his VSO already filed an HLR with IC this morning.
So with this obvious error, is there anyway to get the claim expedited? Or does he have to wait the typical four months to get his file looked at again by a senior rater in a HLR?
This is so ridiculously frustrating. It is no wonder so many deserving veterans just give up. And that just pisses me off.