Postal and Federal Disability Retirement: The Volume-based Application

A declaration of the sheer volume of medical evidence submitted is often an indicator of the basis for which a Federal Disability Retirement application was formulated; for, in the end, if reliance of the successful outcome of a Federal Disability Retirement application is expected based upon the longevity and extent of a medical condition, the chances of an initial approval may be somewhat compromised to begin with.

Volume can never replace content; and from the perspective of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, there is often an underlying suspicion that receipt of a thousand pages of medical documentation indicates merely that volume of treatment is being substituted for the substantive content of meeting the required legal standards.

Much of medical notation and treatment records merely reflect a particular appointment’s mechanical applications — continuation of previous treatment plan; refill of prescriptions; standard positive or negative responses to particular questions; prospective treatment modalities; and, as supportive evidence attached to a substantive medical report, they can reinforce the satisfaction of the legal criteria of establishing the necessary nexus between one’s medical condition and the inability to perform the essential elements of one’s job.  But left as a replacement for the doctor’s explicit statement confirming such a nexus, it remains a hollow voice within an expansive but empty chamber.

One should never mistake the legal distinction between “primary” evidence and “supportive” evidence.  The former is meant to establish the nexus between one’s medical condition and the essential elements of one’s job; the latter is submitted to reinforce the former.  When one utilizes the former as the substitute for the latter, it is like the self-delusion that just because you are the best player on a pick-up team in your neighborhood, you are ready to enter into the world of professional sports.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: From the Agency to OPM

Perhaps they are trying to be helpful; but, more likely, the Agency through which a Federal Disability Retirement application is routed, before being forwarded to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, first to Boyers, Pennsylvania, then on to Washington, D.C., is merely acting (or reactively conducting its day to day affairs, as is often the case) in the manner that most Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service do — a mixture of thoughtlessness, and without a view to helping the Federal or Postal employee.

Whether the Federal Disability Retirement packet contains all of the documents which were originally submitted to the agency before the agency processed their portion, is a mystery which will often remain unresolved unless it goes to the Third Stage of the process, which is the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

At the appellate stage (the MSPB appeal), upon an appeal by the Federal employee or the Postal employee, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is required to send to the appellant and his/her attorney, a complete copy of the file concerning all documents related to the disability retirement application.  Until that time, one never knows whether — at the agency, where the Supervisor’s Statement, the SF 3112D, and all the other Standard Forms are to be completed — the Human Resources person at the agency forwarded everything which was submitted by the applicant.

If it is approved at the First Stage, or course, the question becomes an irrelevancy; if it is denied, one can sometimes infer from the body and substantive content of the denial whether certain documents were missing.  But that is the problem of accountability; agencies are rarely accountable; and if it ever comes to light that certain acts of incompetence were clearly engaged in, the scramble to point fingers in different directions always seems to work.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire