FERS & CSRS Federal Disability Retirement from the Office of Personnel Management: The Insular Universe

The self-containment of society has reached a point of no return; when the universe of virtual reality becomes the focus of dominant conversation, where movies depicting historical events replace the factual narrative of serious discourse; of twitter terminals constituting serious haikus of accepted profundities; the age of human innovation and creative destiny has indeed come to an end.

So where does empathy fit into the maze of humanity?  For a bureaucracy, processing paperwork and finishing tasks satisfies the requirement of emotional output designated for responsiveness.

For the individual awaiting a decision on one’s application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the dealings with “life issues” are comprised of:  first and foremost, attending to the medical condition; second or third, the increasing vitriol of the Federal agency, its agents and assigns, or the U.S. Postal Service through its supervisors, managers and other thoughtless coworkers who engage in various forms of harassment and pushing of pressure points; and further down the sequential order of priorities, waiting upon the administrative process of filing for, and anticipating, a decision from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

In a universe where reality and virtual reality no longer have a distinctive bifurcation of differentiating margins, the qualitative conditioning of terminating that video drone is of no greater consequence than denying an application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

The key, then, is how best to awaken the sleepy eyes of the Administrative Specialist at OPM?  In real life, medical conditions have a traumatic impact upon life’s otherwise uneventful discourses.

How to convey that narrative to a bureaucracy and administrative process is the question of paramount importance.  How to shake up the slumbering mind overtaken with years of callous disregard, and pull from the insular universe of self-containment the reality of one’s condition, depends upon the medical documentation, the statement of disability, and the legal argumentation propounded in a compendium of discourse which will touch the soul.  That is the ultimate art of legal training.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: A Hypothetical

The case-law opinions from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, as well as from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, upholds the statement added onto Question 4 of Standard Form 3112A, the form which specifically requests the Applicant’s statement of disability, which asserts:  “We consider only the disease and/or injuries you discuss in this application”.

Failure to identify a particular medical condition can have an adverse impact upon one’s application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Take the following hypothetical: a Federal or Postal employee is terminated from Federal Service; he or she files for Federal Disability Retirement benefits within one (1) year of being separated from service.  While the Statute of Limitations has already been met because the filing has occurred within the 1-year timeframe, during the process of awaiting a decision from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the treating doctor has diagnosed with greater specificity the primary and underlying cause of the medical condition.

In his or her haste to file, the (now former) Federal employee quickly noted the diagnosed medical conditions in response to question 4, but nowhere is there an indication of the newly-diagnosed medical condition.  During the wait, it is now more than 1 year from the time of separation.  The quandary:  The Federal Disability Retirement application cannot be withdrawn, because the 1-year Statute of Limitations has already passed, and so he or she is no longer able to re-file.  No additional medical conditions can be added onto the SF 3112A.

Is there a problem? The answer:  Under this hypothetical, potentially yes.

Even if OPM approves the case, there may be future difficulties if OPM approves the Disability Retirement application based upon a medical condition listed, but resolved.  Care in identifying and properly annotating the medical conditions must be taken in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Describing One’s Medical Conditions

In preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS from the Office of Personnel Management, the conundrum which one faces immediately is to attempt to overcome the seeming inability of third parties (OPM Personnel included) to understand, comprehend, relate to, and ultimately “feel” a sense of empathy and compassion for the particular genre of medical conditions a Federal or Postal worker suffers from.  

While the entire administrative process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is based upon a legal criteria, with a standard of proof set by law — that of “preponderance of the evidence” (which, simply put, means that one must prove that something is “more likely” the case than not — a relatively low standard of proof in the potential options of applying various legal standards) — it nevertheless comes down to having a fellow human being review, analyze, assess and evaluate one’s Federal Disability Retirement application at the Office of Personnel Management.  

Yes, there is an applicable legal criteria which is applied by the Office of Personnel Management.  Yes, there is a set of conforming documentation which must be submitted.  Yes, there are Standard Forms to be completed.  Yet, as with all processes of review, no evaluative process can be merely characterized as an objective calculus; otherwise, the eligibility requirement of a Federal Disability Retirement application should be able to be determined by a computer program.  

While such a possibility may well occur in the not-too-distant future, for the present, an actual person (although this is sometimes questioned, also, based upon the unresponsiveness of OPM and the voicemail messages one encounters) at the Office of Personnel Management must review, evaluate, and determine the viability of a Federal Disability Retirement application.  As such, part of the key to the success of the administrative process must be in the descriptive narrative of one’s medical conditions, their impact upon one’s ability/inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, and the qualitative and quantitative impact, direct or otherwise, upon one’s life.  

Here again, a cold, objective calculus should not be the only approach.  The “human factor” should be included — and to do so, one must extrapolate and apply all of the descriptive tools available in the English language.  

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal and USPS Workers: Shotgun v. Tailored Approach

In filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, there is the “shotgun approach” — of peppering the application with any and all medical conditions which may prevent or otherwise impact one’s ability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job.  The danger of this approach, of course, is that the Office of Personnel Management can (and does) stop at the first medical condition which they deem disables the applicant from performing any of the essential elements of one’s job. If the basis of such a disability retirement approval is a secondary, or somewhat inconsequential medical condition, then there is the danger in the future that, if you receive a Medical Questionnaire requesting an update on your medical condition, that you may have recovered from such a secondary medical condition and deemed to have been fully recovered.  Now, every now and then, in the approval letter issued by the Office of Personnel Management, it will not specify which medical condition was the basis for the approval which was rendered.  However, this is in a minority of approval letters, and is not worthwhile enough to consider taking a chance on such a shotgun approach.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement: The New Year

The New Year is always a time of reflection, resolutions, and an insight as to how quickly time passes by. It seemed like yesterday that we were all amazed that we were entering the “Twenty-First Century”. In a span of a single year, circumstances change; people and perceptions become altered; friends and co-workers seemingly become transformed into strangers; and medical conditions which yesterday appeared irrelevant, contained or able to be endured, suddenly take on a life of its own.

Medical conditions are a reality which cannot be ignored. Then, of course, there is the problem of a medical condition, its impact upon one’s life, one’s employment, and one’s ability or inability to have an acceptable “quality of life” — as distinct from being able to convey a description of a medical condition in order to qualify for FERS & CSRS disability retirement benefits. It is in the describing of a medical condition, and the practical impact upon one’s employment, which is the key to Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS & CSRS. There is a distinction between the reality of a medical condition, and the ability to describe it to an impervious and implaccable agency — the Office of Personnel Management. Many think that, because one suffers from a medical condition, that it is enough to become eligible for disability retirement benefits. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire