VA Reports Progress In Battling Claims Backlog

WASHINGTON – After years of battling a rising backlog of applications from veterans and survivors seeking financial benefits, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is reversing the trend.

Each month for the last nine months, VA’s compensation and pension decisions have exceeded the monthly intake of new claims requiring a decision about a disability’s severity and connection with service.  This steady decrease of claims in the pipeline since the beginning of this year reduced the backlog of ratings actions by 21 percent.

“We’ve seen a growing output from our regional offices, averaging 66 percent higher than last fiscal year,” Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi said.  “We’re confident we will sustain that trend and deliver on President Bush’s promise to bring pending claims to a speedy and fair resolution.”

Under Secretary for Benefits Daniel L. Cooper said VA has been hiring more personnel, providing intensive training and setting production standards.  He expects even more dividends from innovations in the way VA is processing claims, from reorganizing the regional offices’ structure to implementing processes that move quickly on benefit applications that can be decided with minimal time.

“Our employees have tried to do their best for veterans while compensation laws and procedures became increasingly complex,” Cooper said.  “We are committed to the staffing, resources and uniform procedures that will meet this challenge with high-quality, consistent decisions for veterans.”

By October, VA had completed reorganization of its benefits processing offices using specialized teams to focus on different stages of the claims decision-making process.  VA expects the work flow to be more efficient.

The reorganization was among a variety of processing reforms recommended last year by a task force chaired by Cooper before his nomination as under secretary for benefits.

In addition, VA added more than 1,500 new benefits staff over the last two years as part of the largest increase since the Vietnam War.  As the new hires complete training and gain proficiency in the complex requirements of VA benefit laws, they contribute to VA’s record production levels, an average 66,400 claims per month over the last fiscal year.

Another reform over the last year was Principi’s work with the National Personnel Records Center’s parent agency, the National Archives, to speed retrieval of military service and personnel records from a storage warehouse in St. Louis.

In the year since VA and the National Archives signed an agreement to expedite file transfers to VA in order to answer veterans’ claims more quickly, the inventory of file requests pending six months or longer has dropped 58 percent.

VA also has made significant inroads in processing the claims of aged beneficiaries by shifting workload of some of the longest-pending claims to a specialty unit called the “Tiger Team” headquartered in Cleveland.  The “Tiger Team” last fiscal year completed more than 15,000 claims, the majority of which were from veterans 70 and older or which had been pending more than a year.

VA has seen the total number of claims drop from a peak of more than 600,000 in March to today’s 463,000, which includes 343,000 claims awaiting decisions for compensation and pension.  Another 97,000 cases of all types are pending on appeal.

Principi has set a goal to have no more than 250,000 disability rating claims of all types pending.  This figure reflects a normal inventory that allows time to schedule medical exams and accumulate evidence.  The goal recognizes that veterans are allowed up to 60 days to respond to requests for any needed information.

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