Veterans’ agency says claims backlog reduced

Monday, Nov. 3, 2003 | 10:55 a.m.

Veterans Affairs officials in Washington, D.C., and in Nevada say they have reduced the backlog of pending disability claims by more than 40 percent, meeting guidelines set by the Bush administration.

However, a leader of a Nevada veterans organization questions whether those reductions have resulted from routine denials that artificially reduce the workload and hurt veterans who otherwise may have qualified for disability benefits had the VA more carefully reviewed their claims.

The Veterans Affairs Department has reduced the inventory by 41 percent from 432,000 backlogged claims to 253,000, just 3,000 more than the normal workload inventory, federal officials said.

Steve Simmons, director of the VA regional office in Reno, which oversees the benefits process for the state, says Nevada did better than the national average by reducing its backlog from 5,000 to 2,700 pending cases, or by 45 percent.

Those figures are as of Sept. 30, the latest date for which statistics are available.

"Of course we are very pleased -- a lot of (the reduction) has to do with our internal processing changes," Simmons said.

Those changes include splitting the duties of those who gather doctors' information from those who set a rating, as opposed to the 1990s method of using one person to gather evidence and make the rating, Simmons said.

He said the evidence-gathering process by itself often is time-consuming because investigators have to obtain signed releases to get records from private doctors who often do not provide information specific enough to meet the criteria of the VA ratings system, thus delaying the process.

The backlog, he said, was created in part by legislation that was designed to be veteran-friendly.

The Veterans Claims Act of 2000 was passed to ensure that veterans know their rights while navigating through the ratings process. Simmons said the new law also resulted in the VA being forced to redo 100,000 claims nationwide while still handling the regular workload of new claims being filed.

In Nevada, he said, that problem was compounded by the veterans population between 1990 and 2000 increasing by 31 percent. At the same time, the veterans population nationwide decreased by 4 percent.

Also, Simmons said, Nevada has the second highest percentage of veterans among populations of 18 or older -- 16.1 percent. (Wyoming is the nation's leader at 16.2 percent, while the national average is about 13 percent.)

With so many veterans in Nevada, some of them question whether each case in the Silver State was given close attention or was just denied to meet the goal.

"If a case goes before the Board of Veterans Appeals and the board finds for the veteran, the veteran does not necessarily get what he was going after," said Ed Gobel, director of the Council of Nevada Veterans.

"The case instead gets remanded back to those who denied his claim for reconsideration and the process starts all over again. Those cases are not considered part of the backlog because a decision already was rendered when the claim was denied."

"Whether benefits are being routinely denied is a fair question," Gobel said, based on what he hears from members of his organization about veterans fighting for disability claims.

Peter "Chris" Christoff, organizer for the American Independent Veterans and a community activist, said that while getting a disability rating is important to many veterans, just getting to see a doctor is enough of challenge for others.

"It is all part of a process that is just pure torture for the veteran," Christoff said. "Veterans complain to us that they get the feeling the system is designed to discourage them.

"You can't repair one part of the system and not another that needs the same, if not more, attention. Sometimes it is better for a veteran just to go to the VA clinic than to go through the rating process for a disability because the ratings process highly scrutinizes the veteran."

Even then, Christoff said, getting processed for health benefits at the VA's Nucleus Plaza office can be a two to three-hour wait. And that, he said, does not include the other trying issues such as having to go to several clinic locations for multiple health needs.

Since the six-year-old, $16 million Addeliar D. Guy III VA Ambulatory Care Clinic on Martin Luther King Boulevard closed in June because of disrepair, VA medical services are spread out among 15 locations.

Local VA health officials have asked veterans to be patient as the enrollment process proceeds amid the less-than-ideal situation. Last year the Guy clinic treated 35,400 patients. More than 41,000 veterans are enrolled for health care in Southern Nevada.

Simmons said veterans going through the disability rating process in Southern Nevada go to the benefits office on Alpine Street and Charleston Boulevard. With three interview windows open, Simmons said the waits average about 15 minutes on a normal day.

Nationally, the completion process for veterans' claims has been reduced to 156 days from 233 days in February 2002, the VA said, noting that a goal of 100 days to complete the processing of claims has been established.

Simmons disagrees with those who think claims are being routinely denied and artificially decreasing the backlog. He said VA statistics support the opposite. The number of veterans in Nevada who have been rated for a disability between 1999 and July 2003 has grown by 23 percent, from 17,707 to 21,834, he said.

Simmons said the Nevada remand rate that once was greater than 50 percent has been reduced to 43 percent, which is the national average. The highest remand rate in the nation is 56 percent, in Houston, Texas, he said.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi, in a news release, called the reduction of the backlog "a partial victory" in President Bush's efforts to address veterans compensation claims.

"I am very proud of all the hard work our employees around the country have done over the past two years to get our backlog down,' Principi said. "We must not, however, let our guard down now that the inventory of claims has returned to normal levels. We must build on this success."

Over the past two years, the VA has made decisions on about 68,000 claims per month, an increase of more than 70 percent from the 2001 level of about 40,000 claims per month.