Doctors hate administrative duties. They went to medical school, and they want to practice medicine, not law. If they wanted to engage in vast amounts of paperwork, they would perhaps have gone to law school. As such, paperwork, writing medical narrative reports for their patients, providing medical opinions in a report — they are part and parcel of the dreaded “paperwork” — somewhat like filling out all of the forms for medicare, medicaid, insurance, etc. to get paid. Such paperwork is often left to the “administrative staff”, and therefore doctors are only sporadically required to actually prepare any paperwork. This presents a peculiar problem for a potential disability retirement applicant, because in order to obtain Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS, an applicant must have a doctor’s narrative report which delineates certain issues, addresses certain issues, and renders certain opinions.
Thus, the crucial question becomes: How does one approach a doctor and convince him or her that preparing a proper medical report is an integral aspect of treating the patient? The answer: It must be done with diplomacy, sensitivity, caution, guidance, and understanding, all bundled into one. Above all, it begins with a relationship — a patient-doctor relationship that has been formed over many, many years. And, indeed, that is the requirement under the case-laws at the Merit Systems Protection Board governing disability retirements — that those opinions rendered by treating doctors of long duration are accorded greater credibility than single-examination doctors. And it all makes sense.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Application, Appeals, and Other Medical Documentation Submitted To the OPM, OPM Disability Application and/or Process | Tagged: border patrol agents disability retirement, civil service disability retirement, compensation for injured Homeland Security employees, consistency in all the parts of the OPM application package, Department of Defense workers under Workers Comp, disability retirement federal, disabling diagnosis information on narrative report, doctor and patient relationship, doctor information to win a federal employee disability claim, documentation for federal medical retirement, essential elements of a good medical narrative report, explaining conditions that warrant a civil service disability, federal disability law blog, federal employee disability doctor, federal employee guide to medical retirement, federal employee's physician's statement of disability, federal employment disability compensation report, federal service disability retirement, fers disability procedures, FERS disability retirement, filing fers disability application, filing for OPM disability retirement, helping injured federal workers, how to approach your doctor for help?, importance of the narrative report on opm disability, independent and occupational medicine for federal employees, independent medical evaluation postal workers, injured federal employees and doctors that hate paperwork, it's all about work disability and job performance, legal requirements of the medical narrative report, medical narrative report for federal disability, medical narrative reports that support a federal employee's claim, nexus between medical condition and essential elements, occupational medicine report and the federal employee, OPM disability retirement, opm federal disability retirement, OWCP benefits for federal workers, owcp medical retirement, physician's statement of disability, postal workers functional abilities, regulatory requirements of a fers disability medical report, SF 3112C Physician's Statement, single examination and second opinion doctors, strong and irrefutable medical evidence, the symptoms and the diagnosis in the narrative report, usps denial of injury compensation, USPS disability retirement, usps workers compensation disability, why some doctors won't help disabled employees, your treating doctors
