Hello veterans, Travis Studdard here to talk to you about how a VA compensation and pension
exam or also known as a C&P exam can ruin the rating you deserve for your heart related
disability.
Here's what I'm talking about.
When the VA schedules you for a C&P exam with a doctor to evaluate your level of disability
with regards to your heart, oftentimes, that exam is not favorable to you.
Usually, it's not that they find that you don't have a heart disability at all but they
use that exam to give you a lower rating than you deserve and they get the doctor to justify
them doing so.
So how does this doctor that you're going to see on this one-time exam ruin your VA
disability rating?
Well, I don't really know how to say this other than he misrepresents on paper your
true abilities and level of heart function.
What I'm talking about here is your MET score.
Again, look at some of my other videos on what a MET score is for more detail but essentially
what it is is a measurement of how hard your body can work and how hard your heart can
pump before you have a certain symptoms related to your heart such as feeling faint, chest
pain, dizziness, fatigue, shortness of breath.
Here's how it works.
You go in for that exam, the doctor checks you out, listens to your heart, whatnot and
then he starts asking you questions.
He says, "Can you take a walk with your wife?
Do you walk the dog?
Can you do yard work?
Can you play golf?
Can you do this and that?
Do you pick up sticks in the yard?"
He asks you a bunch of different types of questions trying to gauge what types of physical
activities it is that you can engage in.
So here's where it matters.
Let's say he asks, "Can you go outside without symptoms?"
Well, in reality, let's assume that even walking to your mailbox from your ... Down your driveway
to the mailbox and back to the house causes you to have a chest pain and shortness of
breath, all right.
The doctor doesn't put that down on paper.
Instead, he ignores that part and says, "Well, the veteran reports that he can engage in
light jogging before he has any symptoms related to his heart."
Now again, that's a pretty blatant example that I'm giving you there but it happens.
Again, what that doctor is trying to do is bump you down one or more levels of disability
rating.
If he says, "Oh, he has a MET score of seven," which again means that you can go jog without
any problem or ride a bicycle with the grandkids without having any heart related problems
but in reality you can't do much more than take your dog out to the bathroom before you
start having chest pain, all right.
So that means obviously if you can't do very much, your heart is more impaired and damaged
than it is for someone who can go out jogging.
So again, that's how they do it.
They get the doctor to say you can do more than you really can.
I'm going to talk to you in some other videos about how to deal with that.
But again, you need to go in there.
You need to give honest and clear answers to the doctor and hopefully he'll be honest
in how he records that information.
But again, that's why they're asking you those questions.
They're trying to gauge how much you can do before you have symptoms.
I hope that explains the process a little bit.
Look for another video again on how you can deal with these doctors who may not be completely
honest in their assessment of your abilities related to your heart.
Check that out.
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Go too our website, winyourvetclaim.com.
See you next time.