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welcome to cck live in this video we're discussing common questions that you may have about your next
CMP exam the first question is why are CMP exams so important CMP exams are used to determine
whether a disability is related to service and or establish the severity of a veteran's disability
your CNP examiner will not provide any treatment during the exam the purpose of the exam is just
to gather evidence about your condition while it's common while it is a common misconception
that CNP examiners make the final determination whether a veteran's claim is granted or not and
examiner's findings are often integral to the final ruling this means that examiners opinions
and reports are heavily considered when a decision is made examiners have the power to agree with
the veterans description of their symptoms and their symptomology as well as disagree
with the veteran symptoms or their description of their symptoms which can often be devastating to
a veteran's claim so another common question we get is what does a CMP exam actually consist of
so when requesting an exam VA will send a notice either informing you that exam has
been scheduled or indicating that you will need to schedule one on your own behalf
before the exam The Examiner will review your entire claims file which consists of
previously submitted evidence and medical treatment records about your condition
during the exam The Examiner May physically examine you or ask questions about your service
disability and or the connection between the two helpful for veterans to go into
exams prepared to talk about their symptoms and how they impact their day-to-day life
VA examiners might also complete a disability benefits questionnaire or a DBQ each DBQ is
drafted to correspond with a specific condition and is formatted for the examiners to check a box
next to the descriptions that most accurately depict the disability in question it's also
important to note that CMP exams can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour if the exam is very
brief you may not have been able to present the examiner with a complete picture of your condition
before we get further into what to do at an exam it's often important to remember what not to do
it and add an exam so first and foremost the most important thing is don't skip the exam
you have to attend and if you don't attend your claim is likely to be denied if for some reason
you can't attend the exam make sure to contact the provider as soon as possible to reschedule
and then once it's rescheduled make sure to attend the exam at the newly agreed upon time
another important rule is remember not to ramble be unclear or use unclear language
it's important to remember that you shouldn't use legal terminology when you're attending
your VA exam because doctors aren't deciding your case and they're not lawyers they're not
usually going to be familiar with VA regulations case law or any kind of legal language you might
want to use be clear and concise about why you believe your disabilities are related
to service and about how they apply to your life and impact your life on a daily basis
and give examples of your daily limitations to help get your point across another thing that you
want to keep in mind is that you need to remember what is actually at issue during the examination
know what you're being evaluated for be it service connection versus an increased rating because
whether or not you're going for service connection or an increased rating is going to affect the
questions that you're asked and it's going to affect how you should be answering those questions
um it can also be helpful to know if if it is an increased rating exam it can also be
helpful to know what the rating criteria for your condition are in advance so you might
want to look those up so you can get a sense of what the examiner is looking for beforehand
another thing to keep in mind is you you do not want to quote unquote malinger or exaggerate VA
examiners are trained to look for exaggeration so don't do that just be honest about your condition
how it affects you and avoid that malingering label as much as you can just again be open and
honest about how your condition affects you on a daily basis however on the other side of the
coin you don't want to downplay your symptoms either don't use General terminology like I'm
good I'm doing okay today be honest and specific about your condition because how you portray your
symptoms is going to greatly impact your eventual reading down the road so don't
unnecessarily downplay your symptoms because it could actually result in a lower reading if
you're not telling VA exactly how you feel and how your conditions affect you from day to day
the next question you might have is can I bring evidence to my CNP exam veterans do not need to
bring evidence to their exams if they do have new evidence like new records that are not VA
medical records it's important that you submit them before your appointment this will allow
them to enter into your claims file which as we mentioned earlier The Examiner should be reviewing
prior to the time of the examination if you do bring new records to your exam your examiner May
read them but they also may not and they can't submit the records for you so it is something
that is ultimately your responsibility to make sure it gets into the record for VA to consider
however you can bring notes to help you remember things that you want to say during the exam it
can be helpful to just have some talking points um so you know how to answer questions again looking
up things like the VA rating criteria just so you're aware of what the examiner might ask as
well as symptoms that you might be experiencing on a regular basis just to kind of help guide
you throughout the exam so another question that's commonly asked is can you bring a family member to
your exam and the answer is yes you may bring a spouse or a family member to your exam in a
lot of cases this can actually be very beneficial oftentimes this spouse or family member can serve
as a witness to the symptoms that impact your day-to-day life however when you do bring a family
member or a spouse it is important that you have a discussion with this person beforehand just to
make sure that they're on the same page and can get the information to the examiner adequately
getting back to the topic of the examination itself veterans often wonder whether or not
separate conditions require separate examinations and that's often going to depend on whether or not
the conditions you're claiming are related uh for example a veteran who has filed a claim for
a knee condition and a psychological condition are necessarily going to receive two separate
exams for those conditions because there are different doctors with different Specialties
and in theory they're going to get those doctors to evaluate your condition based
off of different criteria and you'd want a specialist hopefully you know sometimes they
don't always assign them to the correct field but ideally you're going to want different examiners
examining different conditions like a knee condition versus a mental health disability
these are different medical areas they involve different medical questions and you want to
make sure that the person asking you the questions is you know competent to do so
the next question you might have is whether your examiner will diagnose you during your
examination examiners will provide a diagnosis if that's something that they are required to
do for the purpose of va making a decision on the claim this will also help to inform them
for whether they can provide a Nexus opinion meaning that whether or not they can relate
it to service they can also say that there's no diagnosis for a condition if they don't believe
that there is one or they can refute private treatment notes so long as they're providing
inadequate rationale or explanation as to why they disagree with those records
uh veacmp examiners will also make a determination stating again whether the condition is at least as
likely as not related to service or not at least as likely it's not related to service and if the
examiner says that the condition is at least as likely it's not caused by service they're
saying that there's at least a 50 chance that the current disability is due to service or an
in-service injury or an event which is really all VA requires to Grant service connection
for a condition it's just a 50 50 burden of proof so that would ultimately be a favorable decision
another question that often comes up when dealing with VA exams is whether or not you can actually
get a VA disability reading without attending an exam and to be honest in very very rare
circumstances you can but it's going to depend on the type of disability we're talking about there
are certain conditions that are automatically rated a certain way so as long as you have private
treatment records confirming a diagnosis VA may be able to rate the condition without getting
their own exam one particular example might be a veteran with active cancer who submits evidence
of that active cancer diagnosis from a private provider in that situation VA is going to assign
that 100 rating without necessarily getting an exam but they will however schedule you for a
future review examination to determine whether or not the cancer is still active which might be
six months down the road or a year down the road um but that's by and large the only circumstance
where VA is not going to schedule an exam initially but they're almost always going
to request a review exam to make sure that the disability is as severe as it was um up until the
point that they determined that the disability is permanent and potentially totally disabling
and in those situations they won't re-examine you however if VA does request a new examination you
have to attend skipping an exam might result in them assigning a zero percent rating if
service connections being granted or they might just deny your increased rating completely if
they don't have the information that they need to determine the severity of your disability
so after a VA exam a lot of veterans will ask how do I know if my exam went
well and the best and often only way to do this is to read the actual exam report
um however VA doesn't just issue a copy of the report unless the veteran specifically
request it so it's definitely important if you don't think you're exam went well to request a
copy of this exam and go through it to do this veterans can send a letter to the VA
requesting a copy of their exam report once you receive the copy of the exam report you
should review it to ensure that the exam report adequately represents the details that you did
report if not or if the report is unfavorable you most likely want to refute the findings
and that leads into the last question that we're going to talk about which is what should I do if I
have a bad exam challenging an exam can be really difficult and it does often take the assistance of
a skilled accredited representative to help refute those negative findings but there are several ways
that veterans can also refute negative findings on exams one of those ways is to submit private
treatment notes which may help to provide a little bit more detail or explanation as to symptoms or
diagnoses or help or refute of examiner's findings you can also submit a private medical opinion
maybe from your treating doctor which again can take a look at the va's opinion and refute
those findings whatever they may be you can also refute the examiner's credentials we talked about
earlier you want to make sure that the examiner that's providing you with the exam is actually
qualified to look at and assess the condition that you're being examined for so you can refute those
examiner's credentials if they don't really align with what you're being examined for
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