Vets Still Face Long Delays From VA

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Months after the Department of Veterans Affairs told Congress it expected its processing time for veterans' disability claims to drop, agency internal reports show little or no progress.

Records show that the department is struggling in its attempt to reduce veterans' waiting time, in part because VA employee productivity nationwide is only three-quarters of what is expected. In some regional offices, it is far lower.

The delays mean tens of thousands of veterans who were injured serving the country are waiting far longer to have their cases decided than lawmakers - or even the VA - would like. The waiting-time measure is one of the agency's key goals to show how well it is serving veterans.

In March, the department was under fire from lawmakers for poor service. VA Secretary James Nicholson told Congress he expected processing times to drop to 145 days for the fiscal year, a target that itself had been changed from prior goals that aimed to bring the average to 100 or fewer days.

For the first 11 months of the 2005 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the department's average time to process disability claims was 167 days, one day slower than last year, according to a Sept. 22 VA report obtained by Knight Ridder, parent company of The Inquirer. The average for August claims was 169 days.

Michael Walcoff, a top official in the VA's benefits division, said that Nicholson fully expected the department to meet its goals but that staff productivity had suffered throughout the year.

"The secretary had very high expectations for us," Walcoff said. "I am concerned about productivity. I believe we have the capacity to be more productive than we have been this year."

Many claims for disability compensation, which pays veterans for injuries sustained while serving in the military, take far longer than the average. The Sept. 22 report said 4,300 cases from August had taken longer than a year to decide. And while some categories of claims have shown improvement in the last two years, others showed a "marked deterioration in performance" and on balance things have not improved at all, the report said.

As a result, the backlog of pending claims is rising, just the opposite of what the department had anticipated. Only last year, VA officials said the backlog should drop to 250,000 claims nationwide. Instead, it is now above 350,000.

"We see a deterioration of service," said Randy Reese, the national service director for Disabled American Veterans, an advocacy group. "They are starting to go into a downward spiral."

It is frustrating to veterans such as Joseph P. O'Marrah of New Lenox, Ill., who first asked for an increase in his disability check in April because his back, shoulder, and other injuries kept getting worse, he said. By August, after exchanging letters with the VA, he called the Chicago regional office and was told that cases were taking 32 to 48 weeks, maybe longer.

"I don't understand why it takes them so long," said O'Marrah, who is 62 and served in the Vietnam War.