Disability Benefit Questionnaires (DBQs) Explained

Disability Benefit Questionnaires, or DBQs, are standardized forms that VA examiners fill out during your C&P exam. Each DBQ is designed for a specific condition or body system and ensures that the examiner collects all the information VA needs to assign a disability rating. The DBQ format is important because the rating criteria in the VA schedule for rating disabilities require specific findings. For example, a joint condition DBQ requires range-of-motion measurements in degrees, which directly correspond to the rating percentages. A mental health DBQ requires the examiner to assess your level of occupational and social impairment using specific categories. Private doctors can also fill out DBQ forms to support your claim. Having a private doctor complete the relevant DBQ can be very helpful, especially if you believe your VA exam was inadequate. The private DBQ carries the same weight as a VA exam and must be considered by the rating official. You can find current DBQ forms through the VA website. Review the DBQ for your condition before your exam so you know what the examiner should be evaluating. If the examiner skips sections or does not perform required testing, note that in a written statement to VA.

Where the 'Restatement of Requested Opinion' comes from

If your examination included a medical opinion, the report almost certainly opens that section with a block headed Restatement of requested opinion, and the question sitting inside it can read as though the examiner wrote it. They did not. The question comes from VA. When your claim is developed, a claims processor at the regional office builds the examination request before anyone schedules you: they pull a standard template from VA's examination management system and fill in the specific in-service event, the contentions you filed, and the records the examiner is expected to review. Most requests are prepared by development staff. The harder ones are prepared by the rating activity itself, which is required to draft the request where the question involves aggravation of a preexisting condition, conflicting diagnoses, claims arising from military sexual trauma, or a claim under 38 U.S.C. 1151. The Board of Veterans Appeals also orders opinions when it remands a case. That request text lands in the general remarks of the examination order, goes out as a VA Form 21-2507, Request for Physical Examination, for an examination at a VA facility, or as an examination scheduling request to one of VA's contract vendors. The examiner then copies it into Section 2 of the Medical Opinion Disability Benefits Questionnaire and answers it. That particular form is one of the DBQs VA does not release for public use, which is part of why the mechanic is so rarely explained.

Two useful things follow. First, the question is fixed before you walk in, which means the examiner is not choosing what to address; they are answering what they were asked. If the request names the wrong in-service event, or frames the question so narrowly that it misses the theory you actually filed under, the answer will be narrow in exactly the same way, and the place to correct it is a written statement to VA identifying what the question should have asked. Second, an opinion only counts if it answers that question as stated and explains itself. VA treats an examination report as insufficient for rating purposes when a required question is left unanswered or when a conclusion arrives without a valid supporting rationale, and such a report can be returned to the examiner or to the contract vendor for correction. The courts have said the same thing in stronger terms: an opinion needs a reasoned medical explanation connecting the conclusion to the evidence, and it has to engage your own documented history. General medical literature can support that reasoning, but it cannot stand in for it. So if you read your examination report and find that the opinion answered a different question from the one printed at the top of it, that is a specific and fixable objection worth raising in writing, rather than a general complaint that the examination was unfair.

Note: This article references sections of the VA's M21-1 Adjudication Procedures Manual. The VA periodically reorganizes the M21-1 and section numbers may have changed since this article was written. For the most current section references, visit the VA's public M21-1 Web Automated Reference Material System (WARMS).