What to do if your claim is denied:
Hearings, Appeals, Board or
Reconsideration
The filing of CA-1 or
CA-2 will normally result in a formal
OWCP decision. You have 30 days from the
days from the date of an OWCP District
Office denial to request an oral hearing
from OWCP District Office denial to
request an oral hearing from OWCP’s
Branch of Hearings and Review in
Washington, DC, or you may request
instead that they perform a review of
the written record with no oral
testimony.
You have 90 days from the date of any
formal OWCP merit decision to appeal to
the Employees’ Compensation Appeals
Board (ECAB), extended to one year for
good reason.
You may also, within one year of any
OWCP or Appeals Board decision made
after June 1, 1987, request
reconsideration (review) from the OWCP
District Office. In order to secure
District Office reconsideration, new and
detailed relevant evidence (usually
medical) must be submitted.
You cannot have a Branch of Hearing and
Review oral hearing or review of the
written record if you have already
received an OWCP reconsideration
decision.
• OWCP’s policy is to provide a decision
on a request for reconsideration within
90 days.
• It is the policy of the Branch of
Hearings and Review to provide a
decision regarding a review of the
written record within 120 days. However,
it may take six months to a yearor
longer after your request for an oral
hearing to get a decision. The length of
the delay depends primarily on how soon
a hearing representative from
Washington, DC is available to be
assigned to your geographic area to hold
hearings.
• If your appeal is to ECAB it could be
approximately one and one-half years or
longer before you get a decision. This
is due to the large number of cases
backlogged at the Appeal Board.
