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House Panel Reviews VA Claims Process

FRA staff attended a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee (HVAC) this week that focused on the Veterans Benefit Administration’s (VBA) transformation plan to implement the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS), a program that will digitize the disability claims process, as well as measure results of the new system to date. The Committee’s Vice Chairman, Rep. Gus Bilirakis (Fla.) noted that VA has yet to completely implement a comprehensive transformation plan to provide veterans with a paperless disability claims process. Bilirakis added that “since 2009, Secretary Shinseki has promised to break the back of the backlog. Instead, three years later, the backlog has grown by half a million claims.” Rep. Bob Filner (Calif.), the panel’s Ranking Member argued that the VBMS was not good enough to eliminate the backlog and that the VA has been working on transformation plans for decades with little progress.

The VA’s goal is to provide a disability rating system that will adjudicate all claims within125 days with 98 percent accuracy. On the day of the hearing, there were 829,028 disability claims pending with more than 55 percent pending for more than 125 days and the backlog keeps getting larger. Witnesses acknowledged some significant progress with VBMS that has been implemented for two years in the VA regional office in Providence, Rhode Island, but there are also some significant problems with the new system, and was suggested that a panel of Information Technology (IT) experts should thouroughly review VBMS.  

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is partnering with VA to provide assistance in digitizing records, however that contract with VA expires next week. NARA officials also cited the need for an estimated 4,000 additional employees to address the current backlog. The issue of allowing veterans to have private physicians determine their disability rating was also discussed.