Early Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Proof and Consequence

What if you possessed a piece of unique information, but no one else could see it? What if, by all appearances, you seemed perfectly healthy, but you weren’t?  What if you struggled every day to meet the stated professional objectives and goals, but were dying inside?

The silence of a medical condition is the consequence of a duality of contradictions:  many medical conditions, including psychiatric conditions, debilitate the “inner” person, and any such explanation to third parties is met with surprise, astonishment, disbelief and denial; but concomitantly, most people don’t want to hear about the troubles of others, anyway.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, one must always distinguish between the medical condition, and proving the medical condition. That X suffers from medical condition Y, unless it is an amputated limb and is self-evident to the outside world, is known only to the sufferer, and to those whom the sufferer relates.

Proving one’s medical condition is done through the objectification of the medical condition — i.e., through a medical doctor who clinically assesses, evaluates, and concludes with a diagnosis.  From there, the proper nexus must be built between the medical condition and the ability/inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job.  Having X is one thing; proving X is another.

Knowing the distinction will make all the difference 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 and Postal Disability Retirement: Overstating and Understating

Overstating a case in a Federal Employee Disability Retirement case can have the effect of undermining the very credibility of the supporting medical documentation which is supposed to “prove” a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS.  It is similar to seeing a well-edited preview of a movie, where the scenes are cut-and-pasted to make it appear more exciting than the actual movie itself.  Then, when the viewer goes and sees the movie, it is a moment of sensory disappointment.  One does not want that same result to occur when the person at the Office of Personnel Management is reviewing your case. 

The inverse of that, of course, is understating a case.  This rarely happens, and even if it does, there is normally not a negative side to it — although, when I have taken over a case at the Reconsideration Level after an initial denial for an individual who attempted to file the application at the Initial Stage on his own, I found that there were numerous statements in the office/treatment notes that had been overlooked, and an older (but still relevant) evalualtion which had not been previously emphasized.  For the most part, an applicant for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS must strike a careful balance between the two opposites, and the tempering guide which should always be used is the medical report(s) itself.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire