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- Hi and welcome back to Hill & Ponton's VA Disability Blog.
I'm Natalia Jofre, the company's COO.
- And I'm Attorney Rachel Cheek.
- And we're gonna be taking today about orthopedic injuries.
So, your VA claims and orthopedic injuries.
Rachel, some veterans want to know, "How do I qualify
for disability benefits for orthopedic conditions?"
- Okay.
So, the standard formula basically,
for getting service connected, is you need
a current diagnosis, you need in-service injury
or incident or incurrence.
Basically showing that something happened in service
to cause this condition.
And you need a Nexus which links
the current condition and the in-service incident.
- Okay.
What if they already had, and we see this all the time,
what if they had orthopedic conditions before service,
can hey still get benefits?
- Yes you can.
- Okay.
- Now, this is a little more difficult.
This deals with what we call "aggravation."
So, this is something,
it's obviously much easier
if you go into service perfectly healthy
and you come out and you've got a back condition.
Okay, well, it has clearly occurred in service.
Whereas if you went into service with a back condition,
you come out, it's even worse,
then you have to show that being in the service,
something in the service either happened
to aggravate that condition,
or escalate its progression,
beyond what it normally would be.
Even if it's a condition
that would have gotten worse eventually,
if you can show that, "Okay, well, it got worse
because I was lifting guys over my head or..." (chuckles)
- Right, right.
- Carrying 50-pound bags of gear,
then in that case, you can get service-connection, as well.
- Okay.
What does the VA look at,
when it comes to orthopedic conditions?
So, can you give us some examples of,
I guess, symptomology or anything else that they consider?
- Sure.
So, orthopedic conditions is a pretty wide umbrella.
So that's anything-- - Yeah.
- That deals with the musculoskeletal system.
I'll probably mostly talk about the bones, the joints,
because that's what we do see more,
but we do, of course, see
muscle injuries, muscle strain, that kind of thing, as well.
So it depends on the condition.
A big one,
huge one for orthopedic conditions, is range of motion.
And so that's something where if you have, say,
a neck condition or a back condition
and you're not able to move with a full range of motion,
the VA will look at how far you can bend,
how far you can rotate certain parts of your body,
whatever is affected,
and the rating criteria for those types of conditions
are based on, basically, range of motion.
For other conditions
they may measure for muscle conditions, for example,
they may measure atrophy, basically showing that
you don't have use of this certain muscles
and so much so, that it actually has atrophied
and it appears to be weaker
and not as full as like a healthy muscle would look.
You would also see things like pain.
I know that we've talked before about arthritis
which would also be considered an orthopedic condition.
And we talked about the 10% rule
which, essentially, if you have painful movement of a joint,
but even if you don't have limitation of motion,
if you say you have pain and you do,
that's something that nobody can contest,
if that's happening.
You can be rated for 10% based upon just that painful motion
because, of course,
even maybe if you have the full range of motion,
technically you can do this,
that impacts your ability to do daily tasks
if every time you move past a certain amount, you have pain.
That is disabling, to an extent.
- Right.
Okay.
What are common body parts affected by orthopedic injury?
So, what would you say, the common injury for someone?
- I would say, a lot of times I see knee conditions.
So, either degenerative arthritis of the knees
or patellofemoral syndrome,
um--
- That sounds fancy.
What is that? - Right?
That's a great question. (Natalia laughs)
It's essentially something,
it affects the way that your kneecaps recently move
and cause pain, can cause limitation of motion.
Also, let's see,
for back, I see a lot of degenerative disk disease.
I'm trying to go through muscles in my head, here.
- Yeah.
- Sometimes even things
like shinsplints, I've seen a lot.
You think with the amount of activity,
the physical training that you've got to go through,
especially during your younger, more active years
in the military,
a lot of people can get shinsplints from that.
And you can be service-connected for that.
- Are amputations considered--
- Mm-hmm. - Orthopedic?
- Okay. - Yes.
Thankfully,
I don't wanna say those aren't common,
I don't come across those a lot,
I mean, those are very serious,
but, yes, that is considered orthopedic condition.
And once you run into amputation
you can start to look at special monthly-compensation,
which I know we've done a few videos about, me and you.
- Yes. (chuckles)
- Basically, anything that affects
the loss of use of one of your limbs or feet or hands,
that's something that would be considered by the VA
to be even above and beyond
normal service-connected disability.
Lets see--
- What about fractures?
I hear a lot about people having fractures
and then they don't heal properly
or they develop arthritis over time.
Can something like that even be service-connected?
- Absolutely.
Well, as I was just mentioning about shinsplints,
that's technically kind of a fracture.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Or, yes, any kind of,
I mean it doesn't have to be in your shin,
it can be anywhere.
Either you have a fracture that doesn't heal properly
and you continue to have problems with it down the line,
especially, if you can show
that that was incurred during service
and you can have the Nexus showing that
your current condition now stems from that event in service.
- Yeah.
- That's something we service-connected, as well.
- Okay.
What about secondary connection?
Can you get any secondary connection
for orthopedic injuries?
- Absolutely.
I'll give you a couple of common ones.
- Okay.
- So, first is depression.
I see this all the time with orthopedic injuries.
We gotta think about it,
if say, you got a back condition or a leg condition,
something that you're not able to get around,
you're not able to maybe be as active as you once were,
you have difficulty doing daily tasks,
that obviously would maybe lead you to be a little depressed
and think about the things that you can no longer do
or just the limitations that it causes.
So, you can't be as active,
you can't be as participatory in your own life,
as you might like to.
That can lead to depression
and I have seen that service-connected,
secondary to an orthopedic injury.
Now, another one I can think of is...
So, again, orthopedic is muscles and bones.
So, something I see a lot
would be
a veteran who maybe got in a car accident during service
and got cervical strain, whiplash--
- Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
- From the car accident,
causing neck pain and issues with your neck.
Well, a lot of times,
well I don't know a lot of times,
sometimes,
if you've got that neck strain injury,
that can lead to headaches.
So it can start towards the back of your neck
and slowly kind of take over.
- Yes.
- And that's something that,
I mean, headaches in of themselves
can be absolutely debilitating, if that's all you have,
but if you have that on top of other conditions,
that's really something that you need to
call to the attention of the VA
and make sure to get that checked out
because those can be secondarily connected, as well.
- It's interesting that you say that
because I know that lots of times
people don't realize after an accident
that these conditions that they're having
are related to that accident.
And like we've discussed before,
while in service, it doesn't have to be,
"Well, I was climbing a ladder
and then I fell while I was working and injured myself."
It could've been an accident that you were having
driving home from base or whatever.
Right?
- Sorry, I had it.
- I saw it.
I saw the moment of, "Yes!" (laughs)
- Yes.
We have a case in which a veteran, he was injured,
he was during his active-duty service
and it was during football, playing a football game.
It was during his active-duty service,
it doesn't matter what exactly he was doing,
as long as it wasn't willful misconduct and nothing illegal,
nothing against the rules. (chuckles)
- She's an attorney, folks.
She always likes to give the disclaimer. (laughs loudly)
- I have to. - That's true, that's true.
- Have to let you know. (Natalia laughs)
Yeah.
But, yeah, as long as it happened
during that period of service and you can show that, yeah--
- Yeah. - No problem.
- That's great.
Can you get 100% VA disability due to orthopedic injuries?
And, I guess along those same lines, TDIU?
I learned earlier today
that you can only get 10% max for tinnitus.
So, is there any kind of cap like that
for orthopedic injuries?
What can you tell us about those ratings?
- So, it depends on the injury.
The rating schedule,
some conditions only go up to a certain percentage.
So, for example,
I mean, I just talked about headaches, that's not orthopedic
but, I mean, I can tell you that only goes up to 50%,
that's the max you can get.
- Okay.
- So, there's other conditions.
I mean, think about it,
you have a thumb condition, say, you can be rated for that
but that disability compensation,
that's not gonna go as high as if you have, say,
a neck injury or a back injury.
But, yes.
So, you can get up to a 100% with orthopedic injuries
because,
I mean, a lot of times,
we were using car accidents as an example.
If you have incurred an injury, you're in an accident
or you were in,
yeah, an accident
or you had something happen to during service
where it's common for more than one joint or body part
to be affected in that.
So, say you're in a car accident,
your back is injured, your neck is injured,
maybe you've got the posttraumatic headaches afterwards,
depending on the severity of your conditions,
those ratings can add up to 100%.
And even if they don't,
TDIU is absolutely something that you can get
for orthopedic conditions
as long as you meet the criteria
which is that you need to have a rating
of either a single condition of at least 70%
or
if you have a,
I'm sorry, if you have a combined rating of at least 70%
or a single condition of at least 60%--
- Oh, okay.
- And are able to work.
- Mm-hmm.
- Then, TDIU may be an option for you.
- Okay, great.
So that's a lot of good news there
in terms of what you could potentially qualify for.
- Absolutely.
- Okay, great.
Well, this was super helpful.
Thank you, Rachel.
- You're very welcome.
- Thanks for joining us.
If you have any questions,
please feel free to visit our website or call our office,
otherwise, we hope you'll join us again in the future.
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