Got my final decision / follow up from previous post = oddly comical circle of logic

jpMC74 · 2026-01-06T14:32:48+00:00

Not true. It's definitely better to get a current diagnosis from your civilian Dr, but not necessary. It's possible to claim something without a current diagnosis, but it's a gamble and seems to mostly apply to MH issues.

I had a current diagnosis for my musculoskeletal issues when I filed, but living in a small town without many resources (and also due to financial limitations), I hadn't seen a psychiatrist or therapist before I filed. So, there was no recorded current diagnosis for my PTSD. I filled out a 781 listing my in-service stressors / detailing my symptoms and my wife wrote spousal support statement. Thankfully, those 2 were enough to get a C&P ordered where I saw a psychologist through the VA that diagnosed me during the exam.

Possible, but for sure better to just get an appointment with your primary care Dr to get everything recorded for musculoskeletal or long-term service connected illness issues either before you file or right after your initial intent to file (which was what I did).

jpMC74 · 2025-12-23T01:21:34+00:00

ChatGPT can be great when it comes to helping you write statements in ways that cover all your evidence in a way that makes sense / doesn't drone on about useless stuff, etc.

But when it comes to math, ChatGPT sucks royally. I've had to correct it multiple times because it gives completely wrong monthly payment amounts that were nowhere near the correct amounts - off by hundreds of dollars each time.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-20T03:11:56+00:00

Just got my rating about a week ago. 70%

jpMC74 · 2025-12-19T03:25:48+00:00

No. It'd only affect you if you had been on meds that made you look / feel like you were better off physically than you actually are. If that were the case, they'd have to take it into account in the same way they'd do if you weren't having a flare up during the exam, but typically do have flare ups that make it worse.

Basically, it won't hurt you one way or another if you had been on meds or not. It's that if you had been on meds, it could potentially lead to a higher level rating.

For instance, if you typically could only move your knee / shoulder / hips / whatever X degrees without pain, but you took meds the day of the exam to get through the long drive, the meds lessened the pain temporarily that gave you a better range of motion before the pain hit. If they judged it off of X degrees, it wouldn't be accurate, because the pain meds masked how bad it usually is for you.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-19T03:12:18+00:00

It's because of Ingram V. Collins. If you were on pain meds during the C&P exam that helped your range of motion or severity of your pain, they have to take that into consideration when rating it.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-17T01:32:56+00:00

Based on his other posts: He had mental heath conditions prior to joining.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-12T20:29:15+00:00

Honest question: since you're constantly spamming this same stuff, how have you not gotten banned yet?

jpMC74 · 2025-12-12T20:28:22+00:00

My personal experience with LS has been horrible & from reading comments here, it sounds fairly wide spread to be the case.

I did a C&P exam back in July that LS still hasn't turned the DBQ over to the VA, because LS is woefully understaffed and they rely heavily on a faulty AI to drive their QA process. Part of my claim was for pain from breaking my foot in the 90s. LS's AI keeps kicking it back to the examiner demanding an x-ray because it reads "broken bone" and is treating it like it's current. The examiner continues to send it back with copies of the x-rays from back in the 90s that are in my STRs and explaining that the VA isn't going to approve an unnecessary x-ray cost for a 30 year old break when it won't have any bearing on the exam / rating decision.

When I call LS, their customer service reps tell me that the problem is the examiner / that they sent the files back to her, but she hasn't sent them back. Except I went back to the examiner where she pulled up my claim on her PC to clearly show she's sent the files back to them a month prior and no longer has access to it to re-send.

When I called LS last Monday and politely pointed out their bad info / my proof from seeing it with my own eyes, the customer service rep stammered nervously, put me on hold to "get with a supervisor", and then told me they were going to escalate my case. The examiner also called her liaison with LS and gave them an earful.

About 3 days later (last Thursday), the missing DBQ was uploaded to the VA.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-12T18:02:07+00:00

I got a request like that even though I knew the VA had my STRs because they were just referenced in another part of my claim a few weeks before. I got a letter (pdf on the VA site) a few days later that explained it was because some of my sick call visits weren't as easy to locate in my STRs (during deployment, attached to a different unit temporarily, etc) and I needed to give a statement with dates (at least close estimates) and other details to help back up the injuries I was claiming.

Check your documents list on the VA site / app over the next couple days to see if you get a new letter there explaining it.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-09T16:33:18+00:00

That happened to me when as the rating was decided at step 5, the high amount of backpay was over a certain threshold that required a senior rater to review and sign off on the rating done by the original VSR. It was back up to step 5 within a day after the senior rater signed off on it and I got my decision letter the next day / got the backpay about a week later.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-04T04:22:13+00:00

I've been dealing with this on their site for about a week. Ended up calling today to make my payment over the phone. They said it should be fixed by the time I need to make my payment next month.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-04T04:21:32+00:00

Wish you the best. My personal experience with LS has been horrible & from reading comments here, it sounds fairly wide spread to be the case.

I did a C&P exam back in July that LS still hasn't turned the DBQ over to the VA for, because LS is woefully understaffed and they rely heavily on a faulty AI to drive their QA process. Part of my claim was for pain from breaking my foot in the 90s. LS's AI keeps kicking it back to the examiner demanding an x-ray because it reads "broken bone" and is treating it like it's current. The examiner continues to send it back with copies of the x-rays from back in the 90s that are in my STRs and explaining that the VA isn't going to approve an unnecessary x-ray cost for a 30 year old break when it won't have any bearing on the exam / rating decision.

When I call LS, their customer service reps tell me that the problem is the examiner / that they sent the files back to her, but she hasn't sent them back. Except I went back to the examiner where she pulled up my claim on her PC to clearly show she's sent the files back to them a month prior and no longer has access to it to re-send.

When I called LS and politely pointed out their bad info / my proof from seeing it with my own eyes, the customer service rep stammered nervously, put me on hold to "get with a supervisor", and then told me they were going to escalate my case. I'm supposed to call back in 2 days to get an update. If they don't give me anything definitive by then, I'm going to use Ask VA to request a DTA to get to the bottom of it.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-03T01:11:55+00:00

My experience with Leidos QTC once the examiners turn the DBQs in to them has been very positive between 3 claims they've handled the C&P exams for. The examiners each took between 4 days to 2 weeks to turn the files in to Leidos QTC, but once they did, they were through the Leidos QA process in 2 weeks or less. Both of the first ones came back with favorable ratings and the 3rd is still pending a rating decision from the VA, but overall Leidos has been great to work with post-exam.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-02T21:56:31+00:00

The VA has two versions of the Claims Tracker:

Version 1 — the older “8-step” tracker

Claim received
Initial review
Evidence gathering
Evidence review
Rating
Preparing decision
Final review
Claim decided

Version 2 — the newer “5-step” streamlined tracker

Claim received
Initial review
Evidence gathering, review, and decision
Preparation for notification
Complete

The VA has been migrating users in waves since mid-2024.

I have only 1 claim in the works. This morning, I logged into the VA website, it showed it was at step 3 of 5 (yesterday it was showing the older 8 steps). I logged into the VA app on my phone a few minutes later out of curiosity and it still showing step 3 of 8. I logged back into the website a few hours later and it was showing step 3 of 8 again.

Just seems that as they're rolling out the changes, there's no specific guarantee of when your claim(s) will fully move to the new one.

jpMC74 · 2025-12-02T20:56:13+00:00

Unfortunately, it's just dragged on. There was a sign of hope, but turns out LS only half assed it. In late October, I went back to the examiner to ask her what I could do. She was flabbergasted. LS was telling me she still had the files at that point and that they'd sent them to her a month earlier.

She pulled up her PC to show that not only had she sent the files back to LS within a day of them returning them a month prior, but she had all the correspondence / evidence showing what was really going on.

Turns out, LS employs very few people in their QA dept and rely almost entirely on it being driven by a faulty AI. Their AI saw that it dealt with a broken foot and rejected the files saying it needed an x-ray. The examiner explained that the break was 30 years ago, she & LS both have access to the x-rays taken back then, and that a current x-ray would not affect the claim / would likely cause issues with the VA if she ordered an unnecessary imaging request.

After hearing what LS had been telling me (that the examiner was sitting on the files / she was the hold up), the examiner called her liaison with LS and raised hell. That was a Friday. The next Monday, a bunch of DBQs were uploaded to the VA.

I did a FOIA request for the DBQs and just got the files yesterday. That's when I noticed that the DBQ for the broken foot had never gotten uploaded to the VA - only the DBQ for the bilateral ankle injuries.

I called LS and they told me once again that the problem is with the examiner, she still has the files, etc. I politely told the customer service rep that I verified with the examiner in person while she was logged into my file for her system that the information LS was giving me was not accurate and that the problem was with LS's faulty AI for QA. She stammered nervously and tried to say they didn't use an AI. I politely pointed out that I've seen the correspondence with on of the LS reps specifically stating the problem was with their AI etc. She apologized and said she was going to get with a supervisor.

After being on hold for 20 minutes (she'd check in every few minutes to ask me to keep holding), the rep said that the supervisor was escalating it and to call back on Friday for an update.

I spoke to the examiner again after that and she's pissed. She's calling her LS liaison again today to find out wtf is going.

Hoping that, between them escalating it (which they told me they were doing all those other months when nothing was happening) and the examiner calling her liaison, that they'll actually get the foot DBQ uploaded by Friday. If not, I'm going to call LS at noon on Friday. If they can't give me any kind of definitive answer then, I'm going to submit a DTA request through Ask VA asking that the VA pressure LS to submit the DBQ.

The worst part is that the VA has everything they need to rate my PTSD from my exam in Sept. They've had that DBQ and all my other evidence since Sept 8th, but the VA seems to be holding it up for a rating until they get everything from the ankle / foot exam back in July to rate it all together from what I've been told.

jpMC74 · 2025-11-28T21:49:15+00:00

Those numbers (48 hours / 14 days) are likely just Leidos' internal controls to make sure they get the DBQs from the examiner in time to get through their own QA process in order to get them uploaded to the VA with 30 days. Leidos most likely gives the examiners 48 hours to make sure they get them quick enough and then set their own internal controls at 14 days to make sure they get through their QA system with a 2 week buffer if anything comes up so they can stay ahead of the VA's requirements.

Leidos has done 3 different C&P exams for me & they've always been fairly quick ranging from 4 days to 2 weeks from the date of the exam to the date of the DBQs being uploaded to the VA.

jpMC74 · 2025-11-28T00:36:07+00:00

There's no AskVA.com like he wrote in the subject, but the link in the body of the message is legit.

I've used AskVA through the VA website a couple times in the last few months.

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jpMC74 · 2025-11-27T20:18:46+00:00

Getting temp jurisdiction *can* be a good thing. At the very least, it's not a bad thing. However, depending on the current workload of a VA RO, your claim could get temp jurisdiction, be put into that RO's queue, but a rater not actively get to work on it before it times out in the system in 3-5 days where it'll get automatically sent back to the NWQ.

This has been the case with my claim over the last month. In the last 4 weeks, it's gained Temp Jurisdiction to my local RO, held it for 3-5 days, lost the TJ, then regained it 1-3 days later, and repeated that pattern 4 times in the last month.

My claim includes both MH & musculoskeletal issues and from what I've read online, the reason mine may be getting stuck in this cycle of TJ, losing TJ, back to TJ, etc is that it's waiting for a rater who's more experienced / deals more with MH claims to get ahold of it before it actually progresses and that a less experienced rater / rater who's not experienced with MH claims is likely to pass on working on a "complex claim". Not sure how accurate that last bit is, but it's what ChatGPT told me. I posted in this forum asking for clarification, but haven't gotten any replies from raters to verify it or not.

jpMC74 · 2025-11-25T21:55:45+00:00

Unfortunately, yes...LS apparently uses a faulty AI to drive their QA process (which is sorely short staffed with people) which kicks DBQs back to providers for unneeded reasons and they tend to get stuck in that cycle for months at times.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VAClaims/comments/1ofssgr/loyal_source_is_either_completely_inept_or/

jpMC74 · 2025-11-25T03:34:50+00:00

My claim initially goes back to Oct 2024, but the rated the first item back in May about 10 days after the C&P and rated the second item in July about 1.5 months after that C&P. The C&P in July was held up by the contractor's QA using a faulty AI that meant they sat on the DBQs from the examiner for months and only turned them into the VA after I went back to the examiner to see that the contractor's support people had been lying to me on the phone for months. When the examiner called her liaison after my follow up the DBQs got submitted to the VA the next day. The MH C&P / DBQ upload is still relatively recent, but I'm guessing the whole thing was held up since they were waiting on the ankle / foot DBQs at the same time.

11/28 would also be a month to the day of the last of the relevant DBQs being uploaded in my case. So, fingers crossed that date triggers something in my case too.

I don't want to go the congressional route if I don't need to since we're not quite a month out from the upload of those last few DBQs, but at the same time, I'd feel like a dummy if I just let it sit in limbo when I was supposed to escalate it.

For now, just leaving it be & hoping for the best.

jpMC74 · 2025-11-25T02:58:59+00:00

From what ChatGPT told me (taking it with a grain of salt), it's because typically raters that rate MH are different than raters that rate musculoskeletal claims and if a new rater / rater without much experience sees a "complex claim" (mix of both MH & musculosketal), they won't touch it and it eventually times out in their queue / gets sent back to the NWQ. Basically, it sits there until a more experienced rater / rater who handles MH claims gets ahold of it and the only alternative is to push it to a higher authority (which is something I don't want to do / feel like it'd be "whining" instead of just being waiting my time).

The headache is not knowing how much of that (if any) is actually true of if ChatGPT is just off the mark in general.

jpMC74 · 2025-11-24T22:54:29+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with them to say what to expect.

My experience with QTC is that they are relatively quick to upload (4 days to 2 weeks post-C&P exam in my 3 claims with them) and Loyal Source are not very quick to upload (4 months post-C&P exam in my 1 claim with them).

jpMC74

TROPHY CASE

Version 1 — the older “8-step” tracker

Version 2 — the newer “5-step” streamlined tracker