VA Touts Paperless System As Backlog Cure

The Department of Veterans Affairs is at it again with the claims backlog. They are claiming that new paperless system will clear the claims backlog and have the wait time down to 125 days or less in 2015. Currently the wait time averages eight months.

We are still skeptical that digitizing the records will result in clearing the backlog. What are your thoughts?

 

From Stars & Stripes:

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ new digitized records system is bringing “fundamental improvements” to the agency’s efforts to slash its massive backlog of pending disability compensation claims, The New York Times reported Friday.

Allison A. Hickey, a retired Air Force general who is the undersecretary for veterans’ benefits, has vowed to process all claims in 125 days or less by 2015. A recent analysis by The Center for Investigative Reporting found the average wait time in June was eight months.

The VA has come under fire from veterans, advocacy groups, lawmakers and federal watchdogs for the delays. A May inspector general’s audit of a regional office in North Carolina found that the sheer volume of claims paperwork was so overwhelming that itthreatened to collapse the building. Auditors documented claims files piled nearly to the ceiling and in towering stacks of cardboard boxes.

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5 Comments

  1. The benefits for the paperless office is :-
    Accessibility to any document, Security to the database as well as client work place, Simplicity, Online Storage and Retrieval and also Document Storage Costs reduces. This method is also a type of eco-friendly as it saves much of the forest to be deforested.

  2. Tonight’s evening news JUST talked about the VA’s BIG FAIL with new computer system to make claims “paperless and streamlined”. They said that some contracters made ALOT of money on the software BUT the Veteran’s Admn. did not properly TEST IT and as it is, it may have to be completely SCRAPPED because it would actually make the caimes process even longer, if THAT was even possible!!!
    I HEAR a resounding thousands of Veteran’s yelling, “WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!”
    Software CANNOT eliminate incompetance if the SAME people with their heads up their perverbial @ss are STILL running things by not even FOLLOWING let alone KNOW the very regulations they use to try to deny our claims!!!
    This was on Columbus, OH local but State Capitol news and even a FOX affilliate.

  3. So with a paperless system, it will just be easier to say “we got hacked and that information was lost”!! Also, when I saw my actual C-File being two 14 inch stacks of paper in two huge binders, makes me wonder what contractor will make mega-bucks and get paid for it AND to maintain such a system with the appropriately much needed electronic security, for obvious reasons? Will that replace the incompetent reviewers whom continually have audacity to not follow Regs. in making Diability Determinations? Will the VA then claim they need a whole new multi-server and computer system to even use this paperless system? I call it what it is, a RUSE! Is it now going to be even easier for the VA to manipulate data in an electronic format and THEN claim the VETERAN has manipulated the paper record submitted? Sorry, I do not buy it when the problem of incompetency and using the regulations as a STANDARD rather than being at the whim and mood of individual reviewers! We as Veterans are/were under the immobile standardized UCMJ Regs and the VA simply needs that consistency across the board in each and every State!!

  4. The paperless system is a ruse to get politicians off the backs of top VA officials because of the claims backlog. A paperless system of medical records and claim details will be good for storage, but the maintenance of such of a system will be enormous. Many, many new inputs will be electronically required of all VA employees, almost creating another job to be done. Employees will resent the new system which will be used to demand greater productivity, but can never substitute for reasoning and analysis of claims.

  5. ‘While the VA attempts to sell their paperless system, are they sharing any results? No. VA needs to start managing the workload instead of touting paperless systems; adding layers of evaluation builders that have problems each day; quit wasting time changing DBQ’s that only add more confusion and require changing again the next day. VA should put their money where their mouth is! Where are the objective results of all of their pilot programs that they are touting? There are none and there will be none soon. Show us the results, quit talking, quit talking some more, and start acting!

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