I’ve been in the process for coming up on a year. My therapist’s office has this policy that I just now learned about where they don’t give interviews for BI’s. I went ahead and released all my therapy records early Feb, and haven’t heard anything still. Since it seemed to be taking an unexpected amount of time, I asked for an exact copy of what was provided to the investigator, and it turns out they only released the dates I was seen and my initial interview years ago along with billing diagnostic codes. The records folks told me if they needed more I would have to give them to the government myself, but I already know this isn’t something they’ll accept.
What do I do here? I know just wait, but would it help for me to find someone to do an eval at this point?
I have ADHD but I had a couple reportable misdiagnoses in 2000.
If you’ve done everything you are supposed to do, well, you’ve done everything you can do. You can offer to provide whatever copies of treatment or diagnosis information you may have. It might not be accepted, but you’ll have at least made the offer. If your therapist’s office won’t cooperate, you can’t force it, and most likely neither can (or will, if they can) the investigator. Yeah, that might have negative impact on your investigation.
I’ll note the standard form (page 135 of the SF86 document at https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf - and I think there’s a “standalone” version that’s very very similar) that you sign as a release (and you may already have done so) that the provider then “just” needs to complete a relatively small amount of information. Why any given therapist or practice might have a problem with that, I don’t know.
That’s the part they said they couldn’t complete. The reasoning I was given was “we aren’t allowed per corporate policy to provide a prognosis for any patient for liability reasons. Government background investigation and interviews are included in things we can’t participate in.” from what he explained it was a they look fine today but what if tomorrow isn’t the same? thing.
I offered to give all my records over during my interview last year, and was told no, then told they wouldn’t ever need all of them. That fact didn’t make it into my ROI. I told the investigator this time if they need me to see someone for a full eval due to this, I’d be more than happy to.
So I don’t know how this plays out with adjudication, but as far as the background investigator goes, we ask for the information and once we are told we cannot get the information due to policy and the provider declines to interview we simply disclaim that information in our report and transmit the report. No further field work has to be completed.
I had figured. My FSO put in another RFA, and I “graduated” therapy early this month. The discharge record has my diagnosis and prognosis in the rationale section, so if it gets to that point I can provide that as a copy.
