DODMERB Post Qualification Injury Doc Submittal Procedure

c3n

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Mar 1, 2017
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DS applied to several academies, has rec'd nominations and passed DOD Medical. Was injured during ice hockey game, seen by doctor and was cleared to return to normal activities without any restrictions. Medical Eval letter states that any illness, injury, etc must be reported immediately. He and I have both tried calling DOD to get instructions on proper procedure for submitting documentation. We cannot reach a human and have left numerous messages without receiving a return call from DOD. Can anyone point us in the right direction for how to properly submit required documentation?
 
If it did not involve hospitalization, concussion, or treatment beyond tests/x-rays to rule out something more serious, I would move on.
 
Two doctor visits and one MRI however he had a previous injury to same knee and he had to complete remedial paperwork for him to be qualified. Just want to follow proper procedure...
 
I suppose it now depends on what the previous injury was. If surgical reconstruction of ligaments, then perhaps it should be reported. I am by no means an expert on DODMERB. Without getting into detail, you should consider how this injury relates to what was reported, what the severity of the injury was (ie few days rest, bruise, strain, etc.), was there any treatment (beyond tests) provided by a health care professional, and ultimately what the doctor concluded at the end of the visits and MRI.

Bottom line - If there is no diagnosis of an injury, then there is nothing to report.

As to the procedure/process...I could find nothing other than the contacts on the website that I am sure you have gone through. If anything email the helpdesk email address and put your liaison's name in the subject/body of the message asking the question.
 
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You raise a very valid point...If there is no diagnosis of injury (which there was not in this case), then there is nothing to report. I/we may be hyper-focused on following procedure and protocol surrounding ANY illness or injury that we overlooked the fact that there really is nothing to report. Thanks for your perspective.
 
Continued to call and left another message. Finally received a call back today. DOD representative very friendly, understanding and helpful. Explained our circumstance. She agreed that because the "current" non-injury issue was related to the previous injury which was reported on the initial exam we needed to document it. She gave us specific instructions (include cover letter hand dated and signed with doctor/MRI reports) and a specific email address to send everything to. Normally this sort of submission would go to the help desk email address listed on their website. I am glad she explained this because we initially thought the help desk was more for questions like "What happens now?, Where do we send this? and other questions like that - not for submitting documents. She also explained that there are approx 5-6 representative handling at least 4000 applicants each so reaching a real human can be difficult. Once she receives our documentation, it will be forwarded on to the appropriate review team. If they change my DS status in any way we will receive further notification/instructions. If we hear nothing that means they are not changing his status and the documentation will just stay in his file...fingers crossed we hear nothing!
 
So in your case the report of the "non injury" (i.e. incident that you had thoroughly checked out which resulted in a diagnosis of a non injury) was required because it was tied to an existing previously reported injury. Correct???
 
I guess we could have not reported it since there was no injury to report however, we were not willing to risk having anything backfire due to not reporting it now only to have it possibly come out some time in the future if something else were to happen. We felt like our situation fell into a gray area and we were not sure what to do but by discussing it with a DOD representative, we "exposed" ourselves and put ourselves in a position of having to do something. Based on other posts we have read on this forum, it seemed like the best approach was full disclosure. Hopefully it will not backfire. Fingers crossed that "honesty is the best policy" will pay off.
 
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