The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has begun the nationwide transition to paperless processing of veterans’ disability claims at its Regional Offices. This transition sets the stage for the VBA’s new electronic claims processing system, called the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS), which aims to eliminate the VA’s backlog of disability claims by 2015. As of December 2012, 18 VBA regional offices (ROs) have implemented the new system and are beginning to process newly-received compensation claims in an entirely digital format.
Part of the push in implementing an electronic system is due to the increase in disability compensation claims received in recent years. From 2008 to 2012, the VBA saw a 50% increase in incoming claims. This increase, according to the VBA, is attributed to the following factors: ten years of war with increased survival rates, post-conflict downsizing of the military, additional medical presumptive conditions, and successful outreach encouraging more veterans to submit claims. Because of these factors, the number of pending disability compensation claims approaches one million. Due to the backlog, in some ROs a service-disabled veteran must wait nearly a year for an initial decision on his or her claim.
The VA Claims Transformation Homepage lists three stages to successfully implementing VBMS, which should streamline the claims process. These stages described in very broad, general terms. First, the VBA’s “Transformation Strategy” contains 40 initiatives that the VA claims will reduce the backlog by 40 to 60%. Second, the VBA’s “Transformation Roll-Out” will implement “changes in People, Process, and Technology through a deliberate process.” Third, the “VBA’s Transformation End State” provides a projection of how the disability compensation claims system will look and operate when it has been successfully established by the VBA.
The VA Claims Transformation Homepage may be accessed at: http://benefits.va.gov/transformation/. More interesting, however, will be the inevitable Government Accountability Office report that will explain the system’s effectiveness. Stay tuned for 2014, when that report will provide the low down on how the VBA’s on-paper (or rather, not-on-paper-anymore) plan looks in practice.
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