MEB, DOD unfit conditions?

[dals]

Hello, my local MEB is done but the last person that has to sign off on it was TDY so i should find out everything this week. What i'm trying to find out is how conditions are decided DOD unfit or not? My peblo is saying the MEB referred condition is the only DOD unfit condition, if any. Would they not consider everything i went to C&P's for? or do they just assume ? It is not making any sense to me. It should be decided from my past records and what they said at C&P right?

on one of the hand outs my PEBLO gave me it said MEB identifies any potentially unfitting conditions, then PEB identifies unfit conditions. This is referring to DOD unfit conditions right? i just don't want to get screwed because the MEB automatically only identifies the one as potentially unfit when i have like 7 other conditions. I already knew most would not, just trying to make sure everything is being done in my favor.

Its important to me because, well i'll find out eventually but i don't have much confidence in the one MEB condition at the top of the page will give me a chance at military retirement. Ive been active duty Air Force for 12 years.

Thank you for the help.

 

[Jason Perry]

The reality is that the vast majority of times, the PEB will only find a member unfit for conditions found by the MEB to fail retention standards/require MEB processing.

In the Air Force, the conditions that fail retention standards and result in MEB processing are found in the Medical Standards Directory. http://www.pebforum.com/site/resources/medical-standards-directory.55/

As for unfitness, the following is the criteria listed in DoD Instruction 1332.18 (the Air Force regulation, AFI 36-3212 uses an odd definition that references a regulation that was rescinded in 1996...the below is the fairly uniform meaning of "unfitness"):

"2. GENERAL CRITERIA FOR MAKING UNFITNESS DETERMINATIONS
a. A Service member will be considered unfit when the evidence establishes that the member, due to disability, is unable to reasonably perform duties of his or her office, grade, rank, or rating, including those during a remaining period of Reserve obligation.
b. A Service member may also be considered unfit when the evidence establishes that:
(1) The Service member’s disability represents a decided medical risk to the health of the member or to the welfare or safety of other members; or
(2) The Service member’s disability imposes unreasonable requirements on the military to maintain or protect the Service member."

If you think you have conditions not adequately or correctly addressed by the MEB, you should request an impartial medical review and rebut/appeal the MEB's findings.

The above aside, it is possible for the PEB to find unfitting a condition not found to fail retention standards by the MEB. It is always better to get the MEB to correct findings to accurately address the condition; don't count on being able to convince the PEB that the MEB erred, especially when you don't disagree with the MEB by appealing.

 

[chaplaincharlie]

@dals

You may want to hold on to a copy of the MSD linked above. That document is hard to find. It took me hours to get to it when I was going through the USAF MEB/PEB process.

I always thought that more than one of my conditions should have been found unfitting. Appealing was moot in my case because the one condition found unfitting was 100%. Be prepared to ask for an Impartial Medical Review or appeal the informal PEB to a formal PEB. (see the post above).

 

[scoutCC]

(1) The Service member’s disability represents a decided medical risk to the health of the member or to the welfare or safety of other members; or
(2) The Service member’s disability imposes unreasonable requirements on the military to maintain or protect the Service member.

That's the technical, regulation way of saying, these issues are causing work problems. I think most people have trouble getting these things corrected because they want to argue how serious the condition is. That's completely the wrong tactic to use. Serious problems come with the territory, it's the military. Nobody would ever make 20 if every serious problem forced you out the door. People can get forced out the door for very very minor problems. Its not the severity they care about, its the mission. Can you, or can you not accomplish the mission. Everything else is window dressing.

I worked with a guy with half his face melted from an IED. Very serious problem, awesome Soldier. I had a commander who took a RPG to the gut. Very serious problem, great commander. The list goes on. Nobody talked about doing an MEB on these guys, they wanted to stay in, medical treated their conditions, they were lucky enough to heal pretty well, they had a bit of rank so the physical expectations were a bit more reasonable. It worked out.

You've done 12 years. Nobody is surprised you've developed 7 other conditions to go along with it. You, like most, found some way of coping with at least a portion of those. Nobody disagrees that you should be compensated for all 8 of your conditions. They're not saying you shouldn't be compensated by saying its fit, they are saying they're one of those things you were able to cope with.
This is almost always a one to one match with the profile. Profile is the first and most basic step in you saying to the doc, hey, this is causing me problem with the job, lets work to find a way to cope. If the profile is wrong, everything goes wrong from there. PEB says the wrong thing is fit because of the MEB. MEB says the wrong thing meets retention standards because of the profile. The profile is wrong because you didn't identify a work problem with the doc. That's the twine you have to unravel. The sooner in the process you begin unraveling, the less of a case you have to build. A ton easier to work a profile than to correct the MEB. A bit easier to correct the MEB than correct the PEB.

 

[dals]

That's the technical, regulation way of saying, these issues are causing work problems. I think most people have trouble getting these things corrected because they want to argue how serious the condition is. That's completely the wrong tactic to use. Serious problems come with the territory, it's the military. Nobody would ever make 20 if every serious problem forced you out the door. People can get forced out the door for very very minor problems. Its not the severity they care about, its the mission. Can you, or can you not accomplish the mission. Everything else is window dressing.

I worked with a guy with half his face melted from an IED. Very serious problem, awesome Soldier. I had a commander who took a RPG to the gut. Very serious problem, great commander. The list goes on. Nobody talked about doing an MEB on these guys, they wanted to stay in, medical treated their conditions, they were lucky enough to heal pretty well, they had a bit of rank so the physical expectations were a bit more reasonable. It worked out.

You've done 12 years. Nobody is surprised you've developed 7 other conditions to go along with it. You, like most, found some way of coping with at least a portion of those. Nobody disagrees that you should be compensated for all 8 of your conditions. They're not saying you shouldn't be compensated by saying its fit, they are saying they're one of those things you were able to cope with.
This is almost always a one to one match with the profile. Profile is the first and most basic step in you saying to the doc, hey, this is causing me problem with the job, lets work to find a way to cope. If the profile is wrong, everything goes wrong from there. PEB says the wrong thing is fit because of the MEB. MEB says the wrong thing meets retention standards because of the profile. The profile is wrong because you didn't identify a work problem with the doc. That's the twine you have to unravel. The sooner in the process you begin unraveling, the less of a case you have to build. A ton easier to work a profile than to correct the MEB. A bit easier to correct the MEB than correct the PEB.

Thanks everyone that makes way more sense than I was thinking before

 

[Jason Perry]

b. A Service member may also be considered unfit when the evidence establishes that:
(1) The Service member’s disability represents a decided medical risk to the health of the member or to the welfare or safety of other members; or
(2) The Service member’s disability imposes unreasonable requirements on the military to maintain or protect the Service member."

That's the technical, regulation way of saying, these issues are causing work problems. I think most people have trouble getting these things corrected because they want to argue how serious the condition is. That's completely the wrong tactic to use. Serious problems come with the territory, it's the military. Nobody would ever make 20 if every serious problem forced you out the door. People can get forced out the door for very very minor problems. Its not the severity they care about, its the mission. Can you, or can you not accomplish the mission. Everything else is window dressing.

I would disagree with this as it relates to the quoted section (b)(1-2). (Though, I agree with the vast majority of the rest of the post from scoutCC). It likely does not matter much for the OP's case. But, those two subparagraphs, in my experience, are only used when the member is apparently not impacted in their duty performance, but, there exists a condition that they think "just requires" separation or retirement. Example, I see this used in many cancer cases. The member may be fine in his/her duty performance (which would indicate a "fit finding") and may be in complete remission but the PEB relies on these sections to justify an unfit finding. The other instance I see this used is when the member has little or no duty impact (again, indicating that a "fit finding" should issue), but the treatment to maintain the member is either expensive, requires intensive specialty care (with or without medical technology devices that are not common in MTFs) and they use these sections to justify finding the member unfit. The final example where I see this is in cases such as epilepsy or syncopy where the member passes out once or twice or has one or two seizures, has nothing else for an extended period of time, no impact on duty performance, but they state that the member presents a risk to others. The common thread here is that often these cases result in a very low rating and separation and the lack of duty impact would normally result in a fit finding and return to duty under the traditional analysis of whether the member is able to reasonably perform their expected duties.

 

[35Mango]

Hello, my local MEB is done but the last person that has to sign off on it was TDY so i should find out everything this week. What i'm trying to find out is how conditions are decided DOD unfit or not? My peblo is saying the MEB referred condition is the only DOD unfit condition, if any. Would they not consider everything i went to C&P's for? or do they just assume ? It is not making any sense to me. It should be decided from my past records and what they said at C&P right?

on one of the hand outs my PEBLO gave me it said MEB identifies any potentially unfitting conditions, then PEB identifies unfit conditions. This is referring to DOD unfit conditions right? i just don't want to get screwed because the MEB automatically only identifies the one as potentially unfit when i have like 7 other conditions. I already knew most would not, just trying to make sure everything is being done in my favor.

Its important to me because, well i'll find out eventually but i don't have much confidence in the one MEB condition at the top of the page will give me a chance at military retirement. Ive been active duty Air Force for 12 years.

Thank you for the help.

I hope mine progresses as quickly as yours. I was Projected for 6 months total but you know... Army.

 

[dals]

Actually army has been the fastest in some cases followed by air force then navy and marines were the longest I've seen on here.I would say call your meb counciler by the 15th if you don't hear anything

 

[mike314]

Actually army has been the fastest in some cases followed by air force then navy and marines were the longest I've seen on here.I would say call your meb counciler by the 15th if you don't hear anything

Your timelines are fast. I just got a code 37 on the 22nd MeB should start and get a call from my PEBLO mid July. How fast is this going to go I wonder? Any ideas since yours was just last year? Thanks for the info.