You’re absolutely right — a “fit” determination doesn’t mean there’s no medical issue. It just means the board believed you could still serve with treatment.
Crossy Road
sabirose-
Hope you are well. Not sure if you have seen board decisions. If you try to get a honorable discharge changed to a medical discharge, after the fact, the Board of Navy Corrections, will do a Fit PEB determination without me ever actually going through a MEB or PEB, without even considering you never received treatment in service, and no one even considered a disability and its connection to your military assignment. But that is not what a real PEB would do. That is what I am trying to lock in on, what would and should have happened, in a real MEB PEB process, and the fit determination. It seems we already covered it, for the most part, a Fit Determination would document the injury treat it, and at discharge help you get disability support either through the DOD or VA.
Docket No. 7479-20
The Board considered whether you should have been referred to the DES in 1998 when the Army found you to be medically unqualified for transfer and subsequent enlistment due to an unspecified “Spine, Other Musculoskeletal/Psych” in your record. This record provided insufficient evidence for the Board to make any determination regarding whether it should have triggered referral to an MEB.
However, considering your performance in the USNR subsequent to your rejection by the Army and the findings of the AO, the Board is confident that you would found unfit for continued duty by the PEB even if the Navy had been aware of the Army’s determination at the time.8
8 The Board also noted that the Court commented in its remand Order that you “assert in passing that (you) should have been found eligible for a medical retirement as a result of spinal disability . . . Because the argument is not developed at all, the Court will not address it.” The Board determined that even in consideration of the additional submissions you provided to the Board following the remand Order, you did not establish that you suffered a spine/musculoskeletal condition or disability that impacted your fitness for duty and established entitlement to a military disability determination or military disability retirement.
More importantly, even if your referral to an MEB was appropriate at any time, the Board found that you unquestionably would have been found fit for continued service at the time by a PEB.
The AO also noted the Court’s directive regarding the application of the Hagel, Kurta, and Wilkie Memos, but noted that the liberal consideration guidance of these policies does not apply to Physical Evaluation Board (PEB) decision making, which was the basis for the CORB AO. The AO acknowledged your compelling account of the traumatic events that you experienced while serving onboard the USS SIDES, followed by your need for mental health consultations while you were in the USNR. Nonetheless, the AO noted that your enlistment was characterized by an absence of any objective evidence of significant duty performance decrement or inability to perform your duties. Even in consideration of the insight provided by Dr. Foote and the otherwise respected medical and mental health professionals, the AO found that the evidence did not establish that you were unfit for either a spinal condition (reflected in the Army’s 1998 determination) or for a mental health condition.5 The AO was provided to you, and you submitted rebuttal information in response to its conclusions for the Board’s consideration.
5 PEB-related decision-making is reliant on the preponderance of evidence as opposed to the ‘at least as likely as not’ VA standard pertaining to establishing service connection.
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