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MEPS Refusing to See Me?

Parkside

Parkside

Member
Hey all,

I've submitted all of my medical documents to my recruiter, who then sent them on to MEPS, and they requested more information (and letters from doctors) about 3 particular previous injuries/illnesses:

1) When I was in elementary school, I had an endoscopy and was diagnosed with a few ulcers in my stomach due to the presence of some bacteria. I had it treated with antibiotics, and haven't had issues since. I went and saw a GI doc who said I had no lingering problems.

2) I broke my wrist when I was 14. It was casted, healed, and since then, I've injured it once more, but it was just a sprain. That happened about 2 years ago. Hasn't given me any issues since. Saw an orthopedic surgeon, who did some clinical tests and said I have full range of motion and no problems.

3) 2 years ago, I injured my shoulder. I played through my senior season in college with the injury, and then had an MRI after the season, which showed a glenoid rim fracture. The doctor and I decided against surgery, and opted to let it heal over a period of low activity. I went and visited him for a follow up recently, and the clinical tests showed full range of motion and strength.

I weight lift and run without any limitations on any exercise.

After these visits with three separate doctors, I submitted the updates to my recruiter who passed them on to MEPS. I spoke with him just the week before Thanksgiving, and he had some bad news. He told me MEPS was refusing to see me and that I was not qualified for service. They didn't give him any more information, and he told me after the holiday he'd try to get an explanation. If they still refused, he said he could have the Navy Bureau of Medicine take a second look at it as a work around, and kinda force me into MEPS.

Has anybody had an issue with this? It seems bizarre to me. I'm 23 years old and perfectly healthy. I can't imagine why I would be considered medically unqualified to serve. Any speculation?
 
E

exNavyOffRec

Well-Known Member
Parkside said:
Hey all,

I've submitted all of my medical documents to my recruiter, who then sent them on to MEPS, and they requested more information (and letters from doctors) about 3 particular previous injuries/illnesses:

1) When I was in elementary school, I had an endoscopy and was diagnosed with a few ulcers in my stomach due to the presence of some bacteria. I had it treated with antibiotics, and haven't had issues since. I went and saw a GI doc who said I had no lingering problems.

2) I broke my wrist when I was 14. It was casted, healed, and since then, I've injured it once more, but it was just a sprain. That happened about 2 years ago. Hasn't given me any issues since. Saw an orthopedic surgeon, who did some clinical tests and said I have full range of motion and no problems.

3) 2 years ago, I injured my shoulder. I played through my senior season in college with the injury, and then had an MRI after the season, which showed a glenoid rim fracture. The doctor and I decided against surgery, and opted to let it heal over a period of low activity. I went and visited him for a follow up recently, and the clinical tests showed full range of motion and strength.

I weight lift and run without any limitations on any exercise.

After these visits with three separate doctors, I submitted the updates to my recruiter who passed them on to MEPS. I spoke with him just the week before Thanksgiving, and he had some bad news. He told me MEPS was refusing to see me and that I was not qualified for service. They didn't give him any more information, and he told me after the holiday he'd try to get an explanation. If they still refused, he said he could have the Navy Bureau of Medicine take a second look at it as a work around, and kinda force me into MEPS.

Has anybody had an issue with this? It seems bizarre to me. I'm 23 years old and perfectly healthy. I can't imagine why I would be considered medically unqualified to serve. Any speculation?
Click to expand...

Your recruiter is on the right path, but he needs to not worry about the explanation from MEPS, he is thinking like an enlisted recruiter and instead needs to submit documents directly to N3M, if they believe there is a chance you could be physically qualified they will tell MEPS to give you a physical, in my experience after that there is a 50/50 shot N3M will clear you.

Don't confuse fit for normal life with fit for military service, common mistake for those that haven't been in recruiting, just because you had a condition and it healed doesn't mean that you are good to go for service, there are many condition that say "currently have or history of is disqualifying"
 
Parkside

Parkside

Member
@NavyOffRec I appreciate the input. I would find it hard to believe that "history of" either of those 3 issues is disqualifying, none of them are debilitating at all.

As for being fit for normal life versus fit for military service, I can't think of any reason why I would not fall into the latter category. I'm a fit guy, played a sport in college, and besides those 3 issues, have never had any health problems whatsoever. Fingers crossed I supposed.
 
E

exNavyOffRec

Well-Known Member
It is not about debilitating it is that it happened, and if it happened once could it happen again, if the USN buys off on you and it does then they could be paying you disability.
 
T

TimeBomb

Noise, vibration and harshness
Where to begin...
The Department of Defense sets high standards for applicants for a number of reasons.

Medical expenses are the single biggest line item in the DoD budget, and there is absolutely NO incentive to bring on an applicant with known medical problems of any kind. The military environment tends to break people without any preexisting conditions, and experience has shown that it is easier to break someone who is already had prior injuries or medical conditions. You may not feel that your problems are that significant, but to the decision makers in uniform, they are very significant. As NavyOffRec notes, once you're on AD and you get injured or sick, we own that condition, potentially for the remainder of your natural life.

Access to medical care is not always optimal in the military environment. The Navy remains a forward-deployed force, with most medical care in the operational environment provided by hospital corpsmen, more or less supervised by a physician who has completed his internship. If you have a problem that requires more than Motrin to treat, you may require transport to another higher echelon of care.

The direct and indirect costs of moving you to a higher echelon of care are significant. If you're off line, someone else has to take your place on the watchbill, the flight schedule, and cover all your other responsibilities for the duration. If you're not in the vicinity of a hospital, you may require transportation and lodging at the hospital for treatment, which may come out of the command's budget. The worst case scenario is that your condition may require MEDEVAC from a deployed platform (ship, submarine), which may force changes in mission or place the lives of others at risk.

As has been noted here on several occasions, accessions are a simple business decision for the Navy.

R/
 
FormerRecruitingGuru

FormerRecruitingGuru

Making Recruiting Great Again
N3M can override Meps with a courtesy review. It's when they look at all your Meps docs and determine whether further medical processing (physical) is warranted. If they say so then you have a physical at the very least. If not then it's a dead end unfortunately.
 
LFDtoUSMC

LFDtoUSMC

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Try to get your recruiter to set up your entrance physical through DoDMERB. I ran into a similar issue with MEPS, the doctors there kept rejecting me at the med-read. Long story short, it worked for me on the green side of the house.
 
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exNavyOffRec

Well-Known Member
LFDtoUSMC said:
Try to get your recruiter to set up your entrance physical through DoDMERB. I ran into a similar issue with MEPS, the doctors there kept rejecting me at the med-read. Long story short, it worked for me on the green side of the house.
Click to expand...

The USN has a path if MEPS says no they go to N3M they give the yes or no as to whether to continue or not.
 
FormerRecruitingGuru

FormerRecruitingGuru

Making Recruiting Great Again
LFDtoUSMC said:
Try to get your recruiter to set up your entrance physical through DoDMERB. I ran into a similar issue with MEPS, the doctors there kept rejecting me at the med-read. Long story short, it worked for me on the green side of the house.
Click to expand...

Navy doesn't have the option to use DODMERB.
 
LFDtoUSMC

LFDtoUSMC

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
That's interesting that the Marines can use it, but the Navy can't. Is that just an N3M thing wanting to keep reins close?
 
C

calmNcollect

New Member
I'm kind of in the same situation. I was told before I can take the physical, I needed to provide MEPS with all my surgery documents which I did, they then allowed me to come in and take the physical, then they DQ me for reasons that were in the medical files I provided them. This was through Air Force BTW, but my recruiter is telling me that it was an automatic DQ. I was told to request the copy of the DF form and that will determine who actually DQ you and if and how to proceed.
 
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