VA rating reductions: the 5-year stabilization rule.

The short version

VA can lower a disability rating when a condition improves. Section 3.344 sets guardrails for doing so, particularly when the rating has been in place for a long time. The central ideas are stability and completeness: before a long-standing rating is cut, the examination has to be as thorough as the one that justified it, the improvement has to be real and likely to last, and in doubtful cases the rating continues pending a later re-examination. This page paraphrases the text in the eCFR, current as of October 29, 2026. It does not say whether any given reduction is proper.

Where the five years come from

The number appears in paragraph (c). Paragraph (c) says the rules in paragraphs (a) and (b) "apply to ratings which have continued for long periods at the same level (5 years or more)." It continues that they "do not apply to disabilities which have not become stabilized and are likely to improve," and that reexaminations disclosing improvement, physical or mental, in those disabilities "will warrant reduction in rating." So the protection is aimed at ratings that have settled, and it is not meant to freeze a rating for a condition that is expected to get better.

The checker on this page compares a time period you enter against the 5-year mark in paragraph (c). It counts years at the same level; it does not decide whether a disability is "stabilized," which the regulation leaves to the rating agency.

Paragraph (a): examinations and improvement

Paragraph (a) tells rating agencies to handle cases of changed medical findings or diagnosis "so as to produce the greatest degree of stability of disability evaluations" consistent with the governing laws and regulations. In practice it sets several rules:

• Review the whole record. The entire record of examinations and the medical-industrial history must be reviewed to determine whether the recent examination is full and complete, including special examinations indicated by a general examination and the entire case history.
• No reduction on a weaker exam. "Examinations less full and complete than those on which payments were authorized or continued will not be used as a basis of reduction."
• Episodic conditions. Ratings for diseases subject to temporary or episodic improvement, with examples that include manic depressive or other psychotic reaction, epilepsy, psychoneurotic reaction, arteriosclerotic heart disease, bronchial asthma, gastric or duodenal ulcer and many skin diseases, "will not be reduced on any one examination, except in those instances where all the evidence of record clearly warrants the conclusion that sustained improvement has been demonstrated."
• Bed rest. Ratings for diseases that become comparatively symptom free after prolonged rest, such as residuals of phlebitis or arteriosclerotic heart disease, will not be reduced on examinations reflecting bed rest.
• Improvement must be lasting. Even if material improvement is clearly reflected, the rating agency will consider whether the evidence makes it reasonably certain that the improvement will be maintained under the ordinary conditions of life.
• Changes of diagnosis. Rating boards encountering a change of diagnosis are to use caution in deciding whether it is a progression of the earlier diagnosis, an error in the prior diagnosis, or possibly a disease entity independent of the service-connected disability.

Paragraph (b): doubtful cases

If doubt remains after considering the matters in paragraph (a), the rating agency "will continue the rating in effect," citing the former diagnosis with the new one in parentheses, and adding a reference that the rating is continued pending reexamination a stated number of months from that date. The agency decides on the facts of each case whether 18, 24 or 30 months will be allowed to elapse before the reexamination.

A worked example of the comparison

Suppose a rating has been 50 percent since March 2018, and a reduction is considered in October 2026. That is 8 years and 7 months at the same level, well over the 5-year mark in paragraph (c), so the protections in (a) and (b) are the relevant provisions. Suppose the condition is one the regulation names as subject to episodic improvement, and a single recent examination shows a good day. Under paragraph (a) such a rating is not reduced on any one examination unless all the evidence of record clearly warrants the conclusion that sustained improvement is demonstrated. Compare a rating assigned only 14 months ago for a condition still evolving: the 5-year language in (c) is not met, and (c) says reexaminations disclosing improvement in disabilities not stabilized and likely to improve warrant reduction. The facts and numbers here are invented to illustrate the method, not a prediction.

What this page does not cover

Section 3.344 deals with the standards for reducing evaluations. This page did not read the separate procedural rules on notice and the process for proposing a reduction,. It does not tell you whether a reduction was proper, whether to appeal, or what deadlines apply.