VA's ability to provide benefits worsens...

[boardman]

Posted on Fri, Dec. 01, 2006 

 VA's ability to provide benefits worsens
 
By Chris Adams
McClatchy Newspapers
 
 
WASHINGTON - The Department of Veterans Affairs is falling behind in
its efforts to provide prompt disability benefits for veterans
nationwide, as its backlog of cases continues to grow, new reports
show.
 
 
In fact, the department's performance slipped in the past year even
though its workload was lower than anticipated.
 
 
For its part, the VA said that its productivity did drop last year but
that things should improve next year, as a new batch of employees gets
fully trained and up to speed.
 
 
"We've made an investment in 2006 in terms of hiring a lot of new
employees," said Michael Walcoff, one of the department's top
benefits officials. "We feel very confident that when they are
trained, they will be very productive."
 
 
The performance measures are contained in the VA's annual
accountability report sent to Congress and the president in November.
The VA said it was able to meet many of its performance
"targets" for the year, even though several of them are far
from the VA's long-term goals.
 
 
Earlier this year, top VA officials, including Secretary James
Nicholson, told Congress they were anticipating a huge increase in
claims for disability compensation and pensions, due to the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, continuing claims from older veterans and a
special outreach program.
 
 
In testifying to Congress in February that the VA was "focused on
delivering timely and accurate benefits," Secretary Nicholson and
other VA officials said the department expected to receive 910,126 new
claims and complete a decision on 838,566.
 
 
Instead, the VA received far fewer claims - 806,382 - and it produced a
decision on 774,378, or 8 percent fewer than expected, VA data show.
 
 
As productivity dropped, the VA's closely watched backlog of claims
went up, and has continued to rise since the end of the fiscal year on
Sept. 30. It now tops 400,000.
 
 
For years, the VA has tried to get this backlog of pending cases to
250,000; the figure topped 400,000 in 2002, and after driving the
number down to 253,000 the VA boasted about its success. Now, most of
those gains have been erased.
 
 
"They haven't made a lot of progress in the last year," said
Randy Reese, national service director for Disabled American Veterans.
"I know it's on their plate, and I know they are worried about
it."
 
 
Another closely watched measure is the time taken to decide each claim,
and in the past year that average processing time rose to 177 days, 10
days longer than in the previous year. It was the second straight year
performance dropped.
 
 
The VA wants to process claims in 125 days, a target that had been
relaxed from prior goals that aimed to bring the average to 100 or
fewer days.
 
 
To explain the processing slowdown from 2005 to 2006, the VA in its
recent report to Congress gave three reasons: a concentration on older
claims, the training of new staff, and the fact that it had
"received a greater-than- expected number of claims in 2006."
 
 
In fact, the opposite was true.
 
 
As early as February 2005, the VA anticipated receiving 818,076 claims
in fiscal 2006, and Nicholson in February 2006 upped that to 910,000
claims - both above the actual tally of 806,382. (The VA this week told
McClatchy Newspapers the report to Congress was in error and shouldn't
have used the word "expected.")
 
 
The VA maintains a blizzard of measures, goals and targets designed to
help improve service to the nation's 25 million veterans and their
families. The VA's health system generally did a better job of meeting
its goals than did the benefits system, which spends more than $30
billion dispensing disability, pension, education, and other
compensation.
 
 
An analysis of the VA's performance report shows the benefits division
improved its performance from 2005 to 2006 in one-third of its key
measures and met its long-term targets in less than a third.
 
Among additional measures:
 
 
-The time to process education benefit claims slipped from 33 days to
40 days, compared with the long-term goal of processing claims in 10
days. The department said this week it has already brought the
education backlog down.
 
 
-The error rate on disability claims improved, from 16 percent to 12
percent, although it remains far from the long-term goal of a 2 percent
error rate.
 
 
-The processing time for VA pension claims increased from 68 days to 92
days, far from the long-term goal of 60 days.
 
 
-The time to handle the average appeal of a disability decision grew
from 622 days to 657 days, compared with the long-term goal of 365
days.
 
 
-The percent of time it turns in reports to Congress by the due date
dropped from 21 percent to 13 percent, compared with the long-term goal
of 100 percent.