Subcommittee holds hearing on national, state, and county efforts to assist veterans filing compensation and pension claims

Washington, D.C. — Witnesses at a Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs hearing today told subcommittee members that the growing backlog of disability compensation claims awaiting decisions at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) could be reduced with more effective use of resources offered by veterans’ groups and state and local veterans’ service officers.

“The Veterans Benefits Administration has attempted to make the claims adjudication process more efficient by creating specialized teams, improving training, and hiring additional personnel to prepare and rate claims,” said Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.). “We had seen improvements in timeliness and the backlog; however, those gains are slowly eroding.”

Speaking to witnesses representing major veterans’ service organizations (VSOs), and state and county veterans’ service officers, Miller said he wanted to better understand how these groups assist veterans with filing fully developed claims so that VBA staff can focus on the decision-making process.

Ann Knowles, President of the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers, said that one major issue that could be easily solved is for VA to grant service officers “more and better” access to veterans’ electronic files. “There has been a reluctance on the federal government’s part to allow meaningful access to a veteran’s file, even though the veteran’s claim may well have been originally generated out of the office requesting the information,” Knowles said. “There have been a lot of reasons given for this reluctance. Most of the reasons do not stand up to logical scrutiny.”

A statement submitted for the record by New York Division of Veterans’ Affairs Director George Basher described a 2002 joint initiative between his division and VBA’s New York Regional Office, which investigated the benefits of submitting complete veterans’ claims packages from New York State benefits counselors to VBA for determination. Basher found that the time required for VBA to decide claims decreased significantly, and VBA staff became more comfortable with state benefits counselors performing claims development.

Training of service officers from both VSOs and state and local government service officers emerged in testimony as critically important. Testimony showed that while all service officers must complete a minimal level of training established by VBA, inconsistencies exist from organization to organization. Jack McCoy, VBA’s associate deputy under secretary for benefits for policy and program management, agreed with the importance of training and discussed his agency’s efforts to encourage collaboration between VBA and outside organizations.

“Without an adequate level of initial training, follow-up training, and appropriate oversight and accreditation of VSOs by VA,” said Blake Ortner, associate legislative director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, “a valuable service for veterans can potentially cause more delay rather than shorten the time needed for claims processing.”

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