On January 20, 2015, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) received an anonymous tip that staff at the Los Angeles VA Regional Office (VARO) were shredding mail related to veterans’ disability compensation claims. The complainant also alleged that supervisors were instructing staff to shred these documents. In February 2015, the OIG conducted an unannounced inspection at the Los Angeles VARO to assess the merits of this allegation.
In an August 17, 2015 OIG Interim Report, the OIG substantiated that the VARO staff was not following the Veterans Benefits Administration’s (VBA) January 2011 policy on management of veterans’ and other governmental paper records. It found nine claims-related documents that the VARO staff had incorrectly placed in personal shred bins for non-claims related documents. Eight of the nine documents had the potential to affect veterans’ benefits. Not only that, but the VARO failed to provide the OIG with any documentation of shredding logs for the past two years.
The OIG also found that from August 2014 through its February 2015 visit, there was no Records Management Officer (RMO) on staff at that VARO. The RMO serves as the VARO’s final control to prevent shredding of claims-related documents, and that position exists at that location due to a November 2008 OIG Report involving inappropriate shredding of claims-related documents.
There is an Office episode where Michael Scott, fearless leader of the Dundler Mifflin Scranton branch, chastises receptionist Pam Beasley for not knowing where to file faxes received from corporate headquarters:
“How many times have I told you that there’s a separate filing cabinet for things from Corporate?” <Proceeds to throw fax message into the trash, laughs>.
When Michael Scott makes this joke, it’s hilarious. (Reminder – Steve Carell is now an Oscar-nominated actor). “Haha, this document’s from Corporate, so it clearly must not be important.”
The idea of the VA carelessly shredding documents important to veterans’ claims, however, is no laughing matter. Every piece of paper that comes in to VAROs relating to a veteran’s entitlement to service-connected disability compensation should be treated with the utmost care. Unfortunately, it’s not hard to imagine the opposite of what should be expected – I’ve learned of documents put in wrong folders, thrown away, misplaced (sometimes forever), etc.
A “special filing cabinet?” Let’s hope that not many pertinent documents find their way in there. Because there probably isn’t much of a recourse. In fact, the OIG Report merely “recommended” that the VARO Director implement training to handle processing of claims-related and government documents, and to “take proper action on the eight cases that had the potential to affect veterans’ benefits.” What does that even mean? And how many other unidentified cases are out there?
Access the VA OIG’s Report on this issue here.
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They don’t need to retrain them, they need to fire all parties involved and potentially charge them criminally with fraud.
Or any other germane crime!