How VA combines your ratings into one number
If your letter lists several conditions, VA does not add their ratings together. It combines them, using each condition’s effect on your remaining ability rather than a simple sum. That is why 60 percent, 40 percent, and 20 percent come to an 80 percent combined evaluation, not 120.
The rule is in the VA combined ratings table. Combined evaluation and the bilateral factor are defined in the glossary.
Once you know your combined rating, see which programs your rating may open up, from federal health-care priority to hiring preference. Each program names the agency that decides.
You can also look up the monthly pay for every combined rating on the VA disability pay chart, or read how to read your rating decision letter section by section.
Common questions
VA does not add disability ratings. It combines them by remaining efficiency: each new rating applies only to the part of you that earlier ratings did not already account for. So a 40 percent rating applied after a 60 percent rating adds 40 percent of the remaining 40 percent, not a full 40 points. The result is combined step by step and rounded to the nearest 10 at the very end.
The combined ratings table in 38 CFR §4.25 is the published table VA uses to combine two ratings at a time. Combining the ratings in order, from most severe to least, and reading each pair off the table gives the same efficiency-based result.
When you have service-connected disabilities affecting both the left and right of a paired set of limbs, such as both knees, 38 CFR §4.26 adds an extra amount. The paired ratings are combined first, the bilateral factor is added, and then your other ratings are combined in.
After all ratings are combined, the single combined figure is rounded to the nearest 10 percent, once, at the end. This is why a combined value of 78 becomes 80.
How VA rates specific conditions
Each rating comes from a diagnostic code in the rating schedule (38 CFR Part 4). These explain what the schedule says for one condition, and how it combines with your others. Educational only.