OPM Disability Retirement: The Workplace (Part 2)

Last Updated on November 11, 2009

In filing for FERS or CSRS Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the Office of Personnel Management, it is important to stay away from issues which may explicitly or implicitly characterize the particular medical condition as being “situational” in nature.  However, this does not mean that the medical condition cannot have originated from, or been exacerbated by, the workplace environment.  Remember that OPM disability retirement is not like OWCP/Worker’s Comp — the issue of causality, or whether the medical condition occurred as a result of your occupation, is not important to prove. 

However, sometimes, it is simply an indisputable fact that the medical condition originated from the workplace, or was exacerbated by conditions in the workplace.  Such origination or exacerbations, once it takes on a “life of its own” and becomes chronic and pervasive such that the medical condition impacts a person both at the workplace as well as outside the workplace, then it has transformed into a medical condition beyond being merely “situational”.  Thus, that which originated as a “situational” medical condition may well no longer be a situational one.  In such cases — and that is normally the case in almost all medical conditions which begin as a situational disability — there would be no problem with filing for OPM disability retirement benefits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

0 thoughts on “OPM Disability Retirement: The Workplace (Part 2)”

  1. I am thinking about apply for disability retirement, because my disks in my lower back are on my scacita nerve and is causing me to taken off from work numerous times per month or sometimes per week, because I cannot sit or stand-up for long periods of times. I have been employed with the USPS for about twenty-four years. My cell number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.
    Peace and Blessings
    Robert S. Parker Jr.

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