In the last decade, the Department of Veterans Affairs has doubled the number of disability claim processors on staff, and yet the average time to process a claim has climbed during that period from four months to six.
From January 2007 through June 2008, the VA added 2,700 claim processors to its inventory of 8,000. The average time to process a claim still fell unimpressively, from 183 days to 181.
“Something’s going on here that isn’t right, that needs to be fixed. I don’t know what the hell it is,” said a frustrated Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., during a July 9 hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
“In the 1990s you were at 120 days” to process a claim. “Was there something in the process that changed?” Tester asked Michael Walcoff, deputy undersecretary for benefits for the Veterans’ Benefits Administration.
Yes, Walcoff said. Congress in 2000 passed the Veterans Claims Assistance Act. Since then, two thirds of the time required to process a claim is committed to blocks of time set up to develop evidence to support the claim. A recent study of VA claims processing, conducted by IBM, confirmed that compliance with the assistance act has created bottlenecks for processors.
Passage of the act, in effect, overturned a 1999 decision by the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims that veterans had to submit a “well grounded” claim for VA officials to be required to help them obtain further evidence — such as doctor files or witness statements — to prove their claim.
When a claim is filed, the VCAA mandates that claim processors carefully analyze it and send a letter to the veteran explaining evidence on file and evidence still needed. The letter also must explain that VA will help obtain evidence if names and addresses of doctors or witnesses are provided and that VA will obtain government records pertinent to the claim.
But the letter also gives a veteran 60 days to submit the required evidence. And if the claim is to be based on the medical findings of a private physician, the doctor is also given a 60-day deadline.
“If the doctor doesn’t reply in 60 days,” said Walcoff, “we then write the veteran and say we’re going to give the doctor another 30 days. And if he doesn’t submit within 30 days, we’re going to decide the case on the evidence that we have.”
The process can be delayed further if an original claim fails to include a signed privacy form required for the VA to request medical records.
Some veterans’ service organizations and lawmakers have criticized VA for implementing the act and following it like a lumbering bureaucracy rather than like a dynamic agency bent on speeding up the claims process.
VA officials told senators they soon will implement some of the recommendations from an IBM report intended to speed the claims process.
The study said, for instance, that the VA should reduce the 60-day period given veterans to provide evidence supporting their claims.
“We are shortening that to 30 days so we can act faster,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Patrick Dunne, acting undersecretary for benefits for the Veterans Benefits Administration. VA also will make the VCAA letter more understandable for veterans and make it available electronically in November after a software update.
VA disability claims have climbed by 5 percent from last year, to 883,000, the result of Iraq, Afghanistan and an aging veteran population. The claims backlog is still a hefty 390,000. Though decision timeliness remains a concern, said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the committee chairman, decisions finally are being handed down faster than claims are being filed.
Kerry Baker with Disabled American Veterans suggested other ways for the VA to speed claim decisions and be fairer, too. He said most claims hinge on medical opinions, and VA should be more willing, as is the Social Security system, to accept well-documented private medical opinions.
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