Step 12: Wait for VA's Decision

The VA will eventually issue a decision explaining what it decided regarding each claimed condition. A condition may be:

Granted

The VA determined that service connection is warranted. The decision will generally identify the disability evaluation and effective date assigned.

Denied

The VA determined that the evidence did not satisfy one or more requirements for the benefit claimed.

Deferred

The VA has not yet reached a final decision on that particular issue and needs additional development or evidence before deciding it. If one condition is deferred, it does not necessarily mean that condition has been denied.

Step 13: Read the Actual Decision Letter

When your VA decision arrives, don't look only at the percentage. Read the explanation.

The reason the VA granted or denied the condition can be extremely important. For example, these are very different problems:

The VA does not find evidence of a current diagnosed disability.
The VA does not find a relationship between the current disability and military service.
The VA agrees the condition is service connected but assigns a disability evaluation you believe does not reflect its severity.

The appropriate next step may be completely different in each situation.

Pay particular attention to sections discussing:

Evidence VA reviewed
Favorable findings
Your diagnosis
The in-service event, injury, illness, or exposure
An existing service-connected disability
Your private medical opinion or Nexus Letter
Any VA medical opinion
The reasons VA gives for its decision

I got denied. Does that mean my Nexus Letter failed?

Not necessarily. A VA disability claim may involve several separate factual and medical questions. For example, the VA may have questions about:

Whether a current disability exists
Whether a relevant in-service event occurred
Whether another disability is already service connected
Whether there is a medical relationship between two conditions
How persuasive the VA finds different medical opinions
Whether the evidence meets another requirement of the particular claim

VA may also have competing medical opinions in the record and may assign different weight to them.

The important question is: Why did the VA say no?

Read the Reasons for Decision and Favorable Findings in your Rating Decision. If the VA specifically discusses your Nexus Letter, look carefully at what the VA says about it.

Have a Nexus Veterans Letter and received a VA decision?

Send us a copy of the decision. We want to know how the VA evaluated the medical evidence we provided.

Your Rating Decision can help us understand whether the VA accepted the provider's medical reasoning, disagreed with it, relied on another medical opinion, or decided the claim based on an entirely different issue.

Sending us your decision does not mean that Nexus Veterans is representing you in an appeal or preparing a claim on your behalf. If you need help choosing or pursuing a formal review option, consider speaking with a VA-accredited representative.

Find an accredited representative:

VA.gov: Get Help From a VA-Accredited Representative or VSO