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Welcome to The Veterans Disability Nexus, where we provide unique insights and expertise on medical evidence related to VA-rated disabilities. Leah Bucholz, a US Army Veteran, Physician Assistant, & former Compensation & Pension Examiner shares her knowledge related to Independent Medical Opinions often referred to as “Nexus Letters” in support of your pursuit of VA Disability every Tuesday & Wednesday at 7AM Central.
Take control of your medical evidence related to your benefits and visit https://podcast.prestigeveteranmctx.info/veteran/ for more information and to connect directly with us!
Guys, it's Leah Bee from Prestige Veteran Medical Consulting. I am a U. S. Army veteran, former C and P examiner, and a physician assistant. So today I wanted to come on and discuss what are DBQs in VA disability.
Leah Bucholz:So if you're navigating the VA disability claims process, you've probably heard the term DBQ thrown around, but what exactly is a DBQ? How does that impact your VA disability claim? We're gonna break a lot of these issues down, like what it is, who can fill it out, etcetera, today in our video. So let's just jump right in. So a DBQ is a standardized form, disability benefit questionnaire, created by VA, which is aimed to help health care providers collect data and medical evidence for adjudicators for your disability claim.
Leah Bucholz:It allows your doctor, either a VA examiner or a private physician, document the severity of your condition in a way that aligns with VA rating criteria. So DBQs can be crucial for many reasons. They provide clear medical evidence that supports your claim. They help speed up the VA's decision making process. You can have a private doctor complete them instead of just waiting for the VA to do it.
Leah Bucholz:So the VA is probably still going to do one anyways, but you can ask your doctor to do one. That way there's more than one piece of evidence that adjudicators can rely on to evaluate the medical evidence of your claim. So who can fill them out? So a DBQ can be completed by the VA doctor during or the VA contract examiner during a C and P exam, a private physician or specialist. So if you're seeing an orthopedic doctor for your knee or even a chiropractor, this is a great way to do things if you're looking for a second opinion or, again, providing that additional evidence to adjudicators.
Leah Bucholz:Maybe you had a bad exam before and your private doctor is willing to fill one of these out for you. So how can these help your claim? So when a DBQ is completed thoroughly and accurately, it provides the VA with structured medical evidence, making it easier for them to determine your rating. So we've done a lot of videos on what happens in a C and P exam in the past and broken down DBQs specifically, you know, one by one on different types of conditions. So if you haven't seen those, you may wanna check them out so you can see what happens.
Leah Bucholz:And a headache C and P exam, we go through the DBQ, right? So these forms, disability benefit questionnaires, include check boxes, measurements in some cases, diagnostic criteria so that there is sort of clearer and more detailed information. Where can you get them? So we're going to look on va.gov here in a second and I'm going to show you where we can gather that information so you can review it, maybe see what's going be on your C and P exam and what kind of questions are going to be asked and where you can maybe print one of these off. So again, you can download them directly from VA's website or you can ask your doctor if they're familiar with them.
Leah Bucholz:Not every condition has a DBQ, that's important to realize. So there's, you know, thousands of different conditions and diagnosis a person can have. So sometimes these are done on forms that are related to that condition. So for example, GERD didn't used to have its own DBQ, so it was done on the esophageal condition. More recently that's changed and there's now a GERD DBQ, so that's helpful.
Leah Bucholz:But that's just an example of how there's not one for every specific type of condition. So, common ones like back pain, PTSD, sleep apnea, there are specific forms for those. So let's jump on over to va.gov so you guys can get an idea of what these look like and where you can find them, okay? Hang on one second. Okay, so here it is.
Leah Bucholz:So let's remember that this is quantitative information, right? So it helps the adjudicators, like we said, determine a rating based on the 38 code of federal regulation, but the different rating criteria, it aligns with a lot of these forms, okay? So qualitative data, or I'd like to think of it like a light switch, flipping a light switch off and on. Is it disability related to your service? Yes or no, that's sort of the nexus or the medical opinion that's provided.
Leah Bucholz:Let's say your knee is deemed to be related to service. Your medical examiner says, hey, I agree, I think this is related to their service. The rater agrees or the adjudicator. This form, this DBQ helps them determine what that rating is, okay? So over here on va.gov, we have public disability benefit questionnaires.
Leah Bucholz:It says DBQs help collect necessary medical information like we talked about. Treating healthcare provider can fill this out. So jumping right in, the cardiovascular ones, there's dental DBQs, dermatologic, endocrinology, ear, nose and throat, GI. And you can see under each one of these categories, there's a lot of different DBQs like gallbladder, esophageal disorders, etc. So gynecologic, musculoskeletal, neurologic, and again we have a lot of different videos that show you sort of a breakdown of each one of these: mental health, respiratory, etc.
Leah Bucholz:So let's just jump to the ankle and pop this one open for you guys. Hang on one second. Okay, so here's that ankle DBQ that came off of va.gov. So as you can see, you can open any of those hyperlinks and you can find that particular DBQ and print it off. And it just has information about your condition.
Leah Bucholz:Let me see if I can blow this up a little bit. Yeah, so you're just gonna information about the condition, the doctor's gonna fill this out, they're gonna put all of your information on here and just history about your condition. I'm not gonna go down each and every single point on here because we have individual videos for these if you wanna take a look at them. I just want you to familiarize yourself with the fact that where you can find these, what they're good for. So hopefully that will be helpful to you.
Leah Bucholz:I guess that's probably about it for DBQs, but again, are forms that help not only with your initial rating, but if you're going for an increase, it helps them determine, you know, if they're gonna do range of motion to determine where you fit in that rating criteria. It can help the adjudicators determine that what you're, you know, where you fit in in that 38 code of federal regulation. Are these forms required? Okay, let me jump off this screen share. You don't have to go to your own private physician and get one of these.
Leah Bucholz:Somebody asked me the other day about a PTSD exam on my YouTube channel. So they were like, Hey, if I only see VA health care and they won't fill one of these out from you, what do I do? Well, your C and P examiner, if VA determines that there's enough evidence to support you getting a C and P exam, which most of the time they do, they're gonna fill one of those out for you at no cost to you. Okay? It might not be favorable.
Leah Bucholz:You might not have a positive outcome with that, but they're going to provide that for you. Okay? So I hope this was helpful. Please drop some comments. Again, the most important thing is that this form helps them to determine the rating percentage that you might fall into, what criteria you might fall into, whether you're 10%, 20%, 30%, or whatever, they can fall back to, okay, here's all the data points from this DBQ and here's where it aligns with that disability rating criteria.
Leah Bucholz:I hope this was helpful. Please drop some comments. Like I said, let me know if there's any other videos that you guys would like to see. And as always, thank you for watching.