I received my disability rating a little over a year ago, now; and as soon as I did I began enrolling in the VA Medical Center system to get access to care through the VA, which is a separate process from simply being rated for disability. Once you're rated for a disability, you automatically will start receiving the VA Compensation payments in the bank account you noted when applying, but if you want to continue your care, you must apply at a VAMC to become a patient. This process can be done online, I believe, or in person at the VA Benefits & Enrollment office within the VAMC which is what I chose to do. They helped me fill out the paper form necessary to be sent through the VAMC's administrative process which ensures eligibility and priority, and they also create a VA ID card for you with your picture on it. The information for the ID card is taken in person, including the photograph, and then the card is mailed to you as soon as it is ready. I did this, like I said, a little over a year ago, and my VA ID card was just now mailed to me this week. I had to frequently return to the VA Enrollment office to try to figure out why my ID card was not coming, and each time I met with a different person who identified a different problem with my ID card processing, and about half the time I went to check on my ID card their online system for ID cards was down so they couldn't help me at all. At one point, my name was different between the MyHealtheVet system and the VA ID card system, so it couldn't correlate my information. This was due to a typographical error when they first entered my name upon enrolling. This took months to resolve, as they explained they had to wait for the system to hard-fail my application before it would let them edit my name in the system. Then a second issue that took months to identify and resolve was that my name was "too long" for the system, which was based on an MSDOS prompt interface, which truncated my name and complicated and hard-failed the application. The Enrollment staff kept taking my contact information and ensuring me they would work on it after I left and contact me if they needed to. It seems they actually did do this, as I did finally get my ID. I had pretty much given up on getting the VA ID card, as it serves no purpose other than checking-in for appointments at the VA. Some businesses and services will accept it as proof of disability and proof of veteran status, although I had other documentation to support that. The card and official-looking plastic credit card with magnetic strip on it, so people tend to take it a little more seriously if they're not familiar with other VA letterhead documents.
I will say that my care at the VA has been excellent to date. The specialists have been fantastic, caring and knowledgeable. The administrators and staff are helpful within the confines of their capabilities (which sometimes is not much considering they fight the same bureaucratic processes that frustrate all of us). And the facility I visit is new and well appointed. I have never once been seen at the time of my appointment, and for general physician appointments I frequently wait about 45 minutes to 1 and a half hours to be seen. But when comparing with private hospitals and private practices I have been to -- which have focused on pushing patients through as quickly as possible in order to bill Medicare and Insurance companies -- the care I get at the VAMC is superb. I would not trade shorter wait times for the conveyor-belt process in private medical settings. I hear lots of criticism of the VA, but overall it is so much better than the alternative that I could not imagine having to use a private hospital with staff and medical teams that don't care or understand the needs of veterans. An aphorism to keep in mind might be, "good things come to those who wait." It's important to understand the stresses and frustrations that the staff, nurses and doctors are also feeling, and realize not everything is in their control!
In addition, I did file an appeal 7 months ago for two reasons. The first is that they had my service dates wrong which impacted when my disability compensation was supposed to begin which impacted the amount of compensation I received, and also because I believed one of my conditions qualified for the higher disability rating and wanted to provide additional evidence to support that higher rating. The online eBenefits website lists my open appeal as being received but no other movement has occurred on that since. Some reports from a few years ago indicated wait times around 500 to even 900 days for traditional appeals. Just recently, the VA introduced a new direct appeal process that they claim will be completed within 30 days, but because I submitted my appeal through the normal appeals stream before they created this new appeals process I cannot simply re-submit using this new process. You can request a review request without additional evidence, so a new individuals reviews your case and comes to a new conclusion on their own. You can submit new evidence to support your claim which may result in additional medical examinations or hearings. To be honest, I have no real clear idea about how the different mechanisms work and what to expect. I spent my years in service fighting bureaucratic malaise and stubbornness, and I have become tired of the fight. I'll probably just sit back and wait for the VA to come back to me with something instead of trying to chase my own tail through the mazes they've created. Feel free to post comments with specific questions or if you experienced something different in order to compare our experiences! And best of luck to all of you reading!
