VA Disability – Part 4

Welcome back, dear BogiDope readers, for the final installment in our series about VA Disability. Here’s a quick review of what we’ve covered so far:

• In Part 1, we noted that VA Disability is a standard part of the military service contract each of us signs. We didn’t write that contract or decide on the terms...the US Government did. The Government planned on paying you VA Disability because you are an expendable resource to it. There’s no moral superiority in passing up on a VA Disability Rating.
• In Part 2, we focused on the process for obtaining the Class 1 FAA medical certificate needed to work as an airline pilot. In the vast majority of cases, having a VA Disability Rating shouldn’t affect your ability to get an FAA medical at all. (Just don’t lie to the FAA about anything related to your health!) There are a few disqualifying conditions, but some of those fall under the standard of “There’s a waiver for everything.” If you’re not sure whether a given condition will cause you trouble later in life, there are doctors who can help you.
• In Part 3, we covered the process of applying for a VA Disability Rating.

Now that we have all of these basic pieces in place, it’s time to formulate a strategy for you to use throughout your military career. If you do this right, it will be quick and easy to get the VA Disability Rating guaranteed by your contract after you leave full-time military service. If not, you’ll essentially be taking food from your kids’ mouths. That would make you a bad parent, but we don’t want to be bad parents, so we’re going to choose to do better. Here’s how:

Table of Contents

1. Documentation - Early and Often!
2. Keep the FAA In Mind
3. Are You a Doctor?
4. Back to Perspective
5. Peer and Command Pressure
6. Conclusion

Documentation - Early and Often!

As we covered in Part 3, the VA looks for chronic conditions or conditions that continue to affect you over a long period of time. Those conditions can be things that started during your military service. However, they can also be conditions you had before you joined the military, that got worse while you were serving.

The easiest and most important part of proving the existence of these conditions to the VA is making sure they appear in your military medical records. This means that you need to tell your flight doc about any condition you notice. Do not wait until your annual flight physical. Make an appointment or skip a morning of email checking to go to sick call and get documented!

In my experience, most flight docs are happy to listen to our concerns. However, their primary focus is treating us and keeping us flying. (As it should be, right?) He or she may not be predisposed to write a lot of notes about seemingly small issues if 800 mg of Motrin and some water can get you back on the flight line ASAP.

That said, if you explain what you’re trying to accomplish they seem to be pretty good about documenting things like you want them to. This isn’t you complaining or whining. You can be upfront and professional about it.

“Hey doc, I’ve noticed that sitting in my aircraft seat on these 7-hour missions leaves my legs and back sore. Over time, I feel like I’m losing some range of motion. Will you please make specific notes about that in my record?”

There are a few docs who will be resistant to this, but most will be more than glad to help.

Most doctors choose that profession because they’re interested in making lives better by treating sickness and injury. Few docs will be happy to stop at documentation; they’ll want to prescribe treatment or refer you to a specialist who can. This is good!

Imagine you’re the VA doc trying to determine whether I qualify for a VA Disability Rating. If you see back issues mentioned here and there throughout my medical record, it might be enough. However, if you see that I got referred to an orthopedic specialist and he or she concurred that I have back issues, it’s an even easier decision.

Don’t pass up the opportunity to get a condition treated. You’re not doing yourself any favors in the long-term living with an actual sickness or injury in hopes of earning a few bucks and getting free license plates later in life.

In fact, you’ll have to ask for that treatment in many cases. There are plenty of those Motrin and water docs who are constantly behind schedule and don’t feel obligated to give you more unless you ask for it. However, if you ask, they’ll definitely get you what you need. Getting a referral or a more involved treatment could improve your Quality of Life in the short term, and it’ll help with documenting long-term conditions for the VA. It’s a win/win for you.

While you should absolutely document and chase down any conditions that you have, you also need to make sure that you continue to document the progress of each given condition over time.

Every time you identify a health complaint, you need to make a mental (or physical) note to evaluate health in respect to that complaint every time you visit the doctor. At the very least, give your flight doc an update on each condition at your annual flight physical. However, if you experience any sickness, pain, or impact to your ability to work or live life normally, you should make an appointment to mention it to the doc ASAP.

Let’s again put ourselves in the VA doc’s shoes. If you’re looking through my medical record and you see that I’ve complained about my allergies being worse at several (or all) of my military assignments, it’s pretty easy to conclude that the Air Force assignment process increased the impact of this condition.

When looking through the VA’s individual disability schedules, I’ve noticed that the difference between a rating of “mild” versus “moderate” for some conditions is frequently wording along the lines of “affecting the member one time per year” versus “affecting the member two - three times per year.” To me, this says that if I have an ongoing condition, like a bad knee from all the running that the Air Force seems to love lately, I need to make sure that I mention my knee pain and weakness to my doc at least once per year. However, if I experience issues with it more often, getting to the doc to get that reported a few times a year is even better.

Put yourself into the shoes of our future VA doc. If I were looking through a medical record, I’d want to see consistent documentation for any given condition. It’d make my determination even easier if the record showed treatment, possibly from a specialist, as part of that recurring documentation. Take the time to get this done. Maybe it’s even an excuse to get out of your next staff meeting.

Back to Contents

Keep the FAA In Mind

We spent an entire part of this series considering the FAA’s position on all of this. When you compare the criteria the FAA has set for a Class 1 medical certificate against the criteria for VA Disability ratings, I see a lot that doesn’t even remotely overlap. As long as you’re physically capable of flying an airplane, I feel like few of the items for which you’re likely to get a VA Disability Rating will impact your ability to get an FAA medical.

Sure, there are a few disqualifying conditions on the FAA’s list, and some are things that military pilots could encounter. Like I said in Part 2, your first step is taking care of yourself and treating things while they’re small. Don’t let slightly high cholesterol or blood pressure turn into one of the cardiovascular issues on the FAA’s no-go list.

If, at any point during your military career, you find yourself facing a condition that you think might jeopardize your future FAA medical, talk to someone about it! Many Aviation Medical Examiners are happy to consult with you on an informal basis. The FAA even has a website for finding AMEs near you. (I recommend you talk to an AME over a military flight doc. They’re more familiar with the FAA side of things and can give you better advice.)

If you can’t find an AME willing to just talk, there are companies that specialize in doing this for a fee. In Part 2 I recommended Aviation Medicine Advisory Service (AMAS), mostly because I know the owner personally and think he’s a fantastic pilot, doctor, and overall human being. You don’t have to limit yourself though. A quick search will find you other options if you want.

Don’t be scared off when these services ask you to pay a fee. I quantified the value of a major airline career in my book, and it’s at least $8,000,000 in most cases. You’re far better off paying a few hundred bucks now to make sure you can protect that career in the long term.

Back to Contents

Are You a Doctor?

In the past, aviation has been dominated by a hyper-machoism that did more harm than good. In that culture, a pilot may have been ridiculed for stopping by the clinic to get a little shoulder pain documented. This has caused us to think that it’s complaining if we go to the doctor for “little” things. Unless you’re “coughing up a lung” you shouldn’t go to the doc at all.