The appeal seeking payment or reimbursement for the cost of unauthorized non-VA medical expenses incurred on February 11, 2022, under the FMP is remanded due to a need for additional evidence and an advisory medical opinion.
The deciding factor: Remand is necessary to correct pre-decisional duty to assist omissions and obtain relevant medical records and an advisory medical opinion regarding the likely etiology of the Veteran's acute pancreatitis in February 2022.
- Claimed conditions
- Acute pancreatitis
- How they argued it
- Not specified
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- June 12, 2025
- Citation
- A25051633
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 910 · Granted: 31% (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 A25051633.
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.
- Partly granted
The Board denied service connection for a neck disability and remanded claims for asthma, pulmonary embolism, thyroid cancer, acute pancreatitis, breast cancer, hypertension, left knee condition, right knee condition, and an acquired psychiatric disability.
- Denied
The Veteran's death was not caused by a service-connected disability.,The Veteran's diabetes mellitus is presumed to be related to his Vietnam service. However, the medical evidence does not support that it caused or contributed to his acute pancreatitis.,There is no evidence of ischemic heart disease in the Veteran's records, and he did not have any history of alcohol abuse. The examiner opined that there was no link between presumed exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune (CLJ) and the Veteran's acute pancreatitis.,The medical opinions were inconclusive regarding whether the Veteran's surgeries caused or contributed to his acute pancreatitis.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has remanded the case due to insufficient development and lack of a proper rationale for the medical opinion regarding the cause of death. The Veteran's surviving spouse is seeking service connection for the cause of his death, which includes multiple service-connected disabilities.
- Denied
The Board denied service connection for the cause of the Veteran's death, finding that his death was not due to his active service or his service-connected disabilities.
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