Last Updated on October 19, 2010
Imagine if you were asked to go into a large warehouse full of items, boxes, stacks of documents, etc., and your instructions were simply: Find what is relevant. You would be lost. Moreover, you may either spend a great amount of time searching for what is relevant, or not any time at all — for, without contextual significance, doing a lot or doing nothing amounts to the same thing.
That is the perspective that a Claims Representative at the Office of Personnel Management possesses when he or she receives a Federal Disability Retirement application with a voluminous stack of medical records, without guiding contextual instructions. Indeed, an Applicant’s Statement of Disability is not merely a statement of medical disability and its impact upon one’s medical inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job; it is, moreover, a guide to the medical records and relevant attachments.
Context and significance must always be the guide. Never just “dump” a bunch of medical records along with an application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, thinking that the OPM Representative will understand the import and significance of such records. You may simply receive a correlative response: a responsive dumping of the application.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
I have a question. My husband gets FERS Retirement (Medical) he was approved for SSDI we just got our over payment letter from OPM Ok so far other than getting cut way back due to the over payment how if anywill this affect his SSDI award. He has been disabled since April 2009 and was approved for his SSDI in Oct 2009. His 12 months have came and went will he also get a cut in his SSDI? We know about the 60% cut in SSDI but he was cut with the FERS from 60 to 40 % and now another 51%. He was cut to 1073.00 and now he is cut again due to to recieveing SSDI he now recieves gross from FERS 523.00 after all deductions his net is 127.00 his SSDI award is 1595.00 just trying to figure this all out and if or how much more we will lose. So far no notice from Social Security his new benefit takes place on November 01, 2010