Ten months ago, VeteranWarriors testified in a Congressional hearing on Complex Claims. One of the key factors in our testimony was the very manner in which the VA Regional Offices are actually handling the claims. Our contention, then and now, is that the VAROs are deliberately altering dates on claims, destroying or closing claims they have not worked, and even going so far as to cherry-pick the EASY claims - all of which is done to improve the APPEARANCE of beating down the backlog of claims and support Under Secretary Hickeys continuous cheerleading. Yesterday, the VA-OIG released a SCATHING and EYE-OPENING report on the Philadelphia VA Regional Office. Before anyone demands that Congress get involved, we must note - the VA-OIG HAS notified Congress of the ILLEGAL and CORRUPT issues at the Philadelphia VARO - repeatedly and on multiple occasions since they first identified significant deficiencies there in 2009!! Before you dig into this report, PLEASE...take an antacid or a cold beer...and remember one basic thing - VETERANWARRIORS IDENTIFIED ALL OF THESE ILLEGAL ACTIONS WELL OVER A YEAR AGO. Anyone who actually believes that these actions are isolated incidents to Philadelphia is delusional. We have been accused of being alarmists, disgruntled, lying and disingenuous. We are none of these things. We are tellers of the ugly truth and champions for our brothers and sisters. We will NOT STOP our efforts towards a FULL overhaul of the VA until the VA stops lying, cheating, conniving, stealing and doing everything in their power to deprive veterans of their rightfully earned benefits and services. Here are just some of the highlights that the VA-OIG has PROVEN and brought up AGAIN: ...This led us to make an unannounced visit to the VARO on June 19, 2014. Since our June 2014 work began we expanded our work to include reviewing allegations of: Staff not timely scanning documents into Virtual VA, the electronic claims repository. Staff inappropriately shredding or destroying military and returned mail that could not be delivered. Staff hiding mail within the VARO. Staff cherry picking and processing easily appealed claims out of order, potentially misrepresenting performance. Staff not addressing over 32,000 electronic inquiries from veterans and beneficiaries.... Philadelphia VARO and Fast Letter 13-10 VBA uses dates of claims within the electronic processing environment to control and manage its claims inventory and generally prioritize which cases staff will process first. VBA policy states that the date of claim is the earliest date a claim is received at a VA facility. Each document VA receives in any of its facilities or locations where it has a presence must be annotated with the date of receipt. Incorrect application of dates of claims results in delayed claims processing actions and compromises the integrity of reported time it takes VARO staff to process claims. On May 20, 2013, VBA issued Fast Letter 13-10, which provided an exception to this longstanding date of claim policy. The Fast Letter guidance advised staff to adjust dates of claims for unadjudicated claims to a more current date, that is, the date each claim was “discovered” in the claims folder. VARO staff were to use a special designator, “Unadjudicated Claims Discovered,” to identify these unprocessed claims in the electronic record. Without this electronic label, VBA staff cannot identify claims where the dates of claims were adjusted under the new guidance. The Fast Letter also reminded staff to consider the earliest date stamp shown on the claim document when determining the effective date for benefits payments—a requirement VBA staff must follow for all claims, found/discovered or otherwise. Additionally, the Fast Letter required the VARO Director or Assistant Director to approve each adjusted date of claim and send an email notification to VBA Compensation Service. The following are examples of how VARO staff misapplied the guidance. PMC managers instructed claims processing staff to apply the “date discovered” rule to manage their backlog of mail. PMC staff cancelled claims that were already established and pending in the electronic record and reestablished the claims using current dates. PMC staff were already aware that the claims existed, so they should have used original date of claim not the “date discovered” rule. Such actions made the average days that claims were pending appear better than if staff had used the original dates the claims were received... During our initial walk-through of the VSC during an unannounced visit in June 2014, we found mail bins full of claims and associated evidence that had not been scanned into Virtual VA since 2011. Here is the link to the report: va.gov/oig/pubs/statements/VAOIG-statement-20141003-halliday.pdf
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:06:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015