VA eliminates Veteran family health care backlog

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced it has completely eliminated the backlog of Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA) applications, a major VA program that provides health care coverage to over 900,000 qualifying Veteran spouses, dependents, survivors, and caregivers.

When President Trump took office, there was a backlog of more than 70,000 CHAMPVA applications that the Biden Administration had failed to process. Applicants were waiting in some cases over 150 days for VA to take action. Those days are over.

As of October, the application backlog has been reduced to zero, with new applications now being processed in a handful of days. VA currently receives about 4,000 new applications per week and can process more than it receives.

VA has also substantially reduced the number of appeals waiting for processing. Under the Biden Administration, there was a backlog of more than 20,000 CHAMPVA appeals. This has been reduced to 1,000 and continues to rapidly decrease by the day.

The backlogs have been cut thanks to VA Secretary Doug Collins’ immediate, two-pronged approach: provide CHAMPVA application processors with overtime pay to get the job done and implement process engineering and automation to sustain the gains going forward. As a result, Veterans’ loved ones no longer face needless delays for health care coverage.

Long-term, automation will lead to faster processing times. In December, VA will complete its move to a more automated application processing system that increases the efficiency of processing CHAMPVA applications. In addition, more than 90% of medical services and pharmacy claims are electronically processed within days of receipt for more timely payment.

“Veterans around the country knew it was taking far too long to process CHAMPVA applications, and that meant delayed coverage for their loved ones,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “We listened, and now the application backlog that caused so many unnecessary delays has been wiped out.”

Ending the CHAMPVA backlog is just one of several ways the Trump Administration is making VA run better:

• The backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits increased 24% under Biden and is down 57% under the second Trump Administration.
• VA is processing record numbers of disability claims, reaching an all-time fiscal-year high of three million claims processed Sept. 30.
• VA has opened 20 new health care clinics across the nation since Jan. 20.
• Since Jan. 20, VA has offered Veterans more than 1.4 million appointments outside of normal operating hours. These early-morning, evening and weekend appointments are giving Veterans more timely and convenient options for care.
• VA permanently housed 51,936 homeless Veterans across the country in fiscal year 2025 – the highest total in seven years.
• VA is spending an additional $800 million on infrastructure improvements to ensure department facilities provide safe and effective patient care.
  • The additional funds will come from savings gleaned from various VA reform efforts.
• VA has made it easier and faster for VA-enrolled Veterans to access care from non-VA providers at the department’s expense.
• VA has implemented major reforms to make it easier for survivors to get benefits, after serious problems during the Biden Administration.
• VA is accelerating the deployment of its integrated electronic health record system, after the program was nearly dormant for almost two years under the Biden Administration.
• VA partnered with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to identify and recover $106 million in duplicate billing.
• VA has brought tens of thousands of employees back to the office, where we can work better as a team to serve Veterans.
• VA has terminated union contracts for most bargaining unit employees and redirected millions in wasteful union spending back to Veterans.
• VA ended DEI at the department, reversing the divisive Biden-era policies and stopping more than $14 million in DEI spending.
• VA is phasing out treatment for gender dysphoria. Frankly, this commonsense reform should have been done years ago.