Today, Secretary McDonald and his fellow Cabinet members released their Exit Memos. The Department of Veterans Affairs memo, available online, covers the past 8 years of serving Veterans, the progress of the MyVA transformation, and a vision for the future.
An excerpt:
Eliminating the Claims Backlog In 2009, VA first defined backlogged disability claims as those pending more than 125 days. The number of both backlogged claims and the total inventory of claims were growing. That growth increased in 2010-2011 when Secretary Shinseki added three conditions to the list of health care issues presumed to be linked to Agent Orange exposure. Secretary Shinseki’s decision allowed hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era Veterans to file new claims. The Secretary knew it would add to our load of backlogged claims. But it was the right decision for Veterans.
To address these significant challenges, in 2012 VBA began an aggressive transformation, predicated on people, process, and technology initiatives to end the backlog. This transformation included creating a new electronic claims processing system, the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS), so we could process claims faster, more efficiently, and more accurately.
With VBMS, VBA transitioned from 5,000 tons of paper each year to electronically processing 99.7 percent of claims. With VBMS, VBA processed more than a million claims each year from FY 2010 to FY 2016.
Most importantly, we have reduced the backlog to 71,690 at the end of FY 2016, an 87 percent reduction from its high point in 2013.
Read the full memo: http://www.va.gov/opa/publications/docs/VA-Exit-Memo.pdf