The veteran's appeal is about the effective date for a 100 percent rating for his service-connected undifferentiated type schizophrenic reaction. The Board has ordered remand to consider whether earlier hospitalizations in 1997 constituted an informal claim and if the July 19, 1979 letter constituted a Notice of Disagreement regarding a prior reduction in disability rating.
The deciding factor: The case must be remanded for initial consideration by the RO due to unresolved issues related to earlier claims and correspondence.
- Claimed conditions
- undifferentiated type schizophrenic reaction
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- March 5, 2003
- Citation
- 0303772
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,599 · Granted: 37% (granted or partly granted, in the vetted decisions on this site)
Judge attribution: 2025 complete; earlier years partial.
This is a plain-language summary generated by AI from a public Board of Veterans’ Appeals decision. It can contain errors — always verify against the original. Look up the original decision on VA.gov (opens in a new tab) using citation 0303772.
What this means for you
A remand is not a loss. The Board sent the case back for more development — often a new exam or missing records — before making a final decision. Many remands later end in a grant, and the decision spells out exactly what the Board wanted to see.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Denied
The Board found that the cause of the veteran's death, a sacral ulcer with osteomyelitis due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, was not caused by or contributed to by any service-connected disability.
- Granted
The veteran seeks an effective date earlier than June 6, 2000 for the assignment of a 100 percent rating for his service-connected undifferentiated type schizophrenic reaction. The Board has granted this claim and assigned the effective date as June 6, 2000.
- Denied
The veteran's claim for an increased evaluation was granted on January 31, 1996 with a 100% disability rating effective from that date. The Board found it not factually ascertainable that the veteran was entitled to earlier effective dates.
- Denied
The Board denied the veteran's claims for increased ratings for his service-connected lumbar myositis, psychoneurosis and conversion hysteria, residuals of shrapnel wounds of the left thigh and pelvis with retained foreign bodies and scars, and residuals of shell fragment wounds of the right thigh and left leg. The veteran was also denied entitlement to a total disability rating based on individual unemployability due to service-connected disabilities.
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