During remarks last Wednesday on the health care scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, President Barack Obama took note of a perceived bright spot.
“We launched an all-out war on the disability claims backlog,” Obama said. “And in just the past year alone, we’ve slashed that backlog by half.”
Yet a review of federal data shows widespread regional disparities in the effort to clear the VA’s backlog in processing claims for disability benefits — and local veterans are among those left behind.
In the 31-county area served by the VA’s Buffalo Regional Benefit Office — covering the western half of New York State from Broome County to Lake Erie — veterans are more likely to face delays in processing disability benefits claims than almost anywhere in the country.
About 61 percent of the 7,254 claims for disability benefits pending as of May 17 in the Buffalo region were at least 125 days old.
Only four out of the VA’s 57 regional benefit offices nationwide — in Jackson, Miss., Reno, Nev., Louisville, Ky., and Baltimore — have worse backlogs.
Experts, veterans advocates and others involved in the process say it is unclear why the Buffalo region is worse than others.
But it is clear, they say, that the problem needs to be addressed.
Jeffrey Freedman, a Buffalo-based attorney with a veterans disability benefits practice, said the system is broken.
“It takes 10 weeks to train a soldier to go out on the battlefield,” he said. “If they get shot, it takes close to four years to get them everything they’re entitled to.”
‘Disappointing’
The VA’s disability benefits system compensates veterans whose disabilities are connected to injuries or illnesses sustained or aggravated by service.
Veterans in the system receive a rating determination based on the level of disability they have. The rating determines their monthly payments.
In 2010, changes in federal regulations made it easier for Vietnam-era veterans to be compensated for disabilities related to Agent Orange, an herbicide used during the war that can lead to increased rates of cancer and other disorders. At the same time, the VA was receiving an influx of applications from many of the 2.6 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
The result was a backlog that began to grow faster than the VA could handle. At a congressional hearing in July 2012, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., expressed outrage.
“It is unacceptable that the federal government is doing nothing but continuing to promise what they promised before,” he said. “A hundred and eighty-eight days is the average processing time for a claim. It is unacceptable.”
A national push to close the backlog ensued, along with a promise to close the backlog altogether by 2015. Paper records were digitized, and 10,000 workers on the VA’s claims staff were ordered to work overtime to process the oldest claims.
The backlog peaked in March 2013, when 71 percent of the nation’s 817,000 pending claims were considered backlogged, and has declined since then.
However, the Buffalo region hasn’t seen the same progress.
While the average disability benefits claim has been pending for 163 days, the average wait in the Buffalo region is 184 days.
In response to written questions, VA public affairs officer Adam McMahon said the Buffalo regional office “exceeded production targets for the last three months, is on pace to exceed May’s target, and is confident this trend will continue throughout 2014.”
He would not answer questions about the workforce at the Buffalo office, or the portion of the work flow that is paper-based.
“The Buffalo Regional Office is committed to serving Upstate and Western New York’s Veteran population in a fair and timely manner,” he said.
The VA’s Office of Inspector General, the agency’s internal watchdog group, has not visited the Buffalo benefits office for an audit since May 2011. The visit three years ago resulted in a finding that the office did not correctly process 32 percent of the disability claims reviewed in the audit.
‘A big mystery’
Jacqueline Maffucci, research director for the Washington, D.C.-based group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who authored a recent report on the backlog, said it is difficult to find information on what accounts for the disparities between the 57 regional benefit offices.
“There really wasn’t, as far as I could determine, any publicly available data that shows how the VA is determining what its manpower needs are in Buffalo versus in Los Angeles, versus somewhere in Ohio or Montana,” she said in an interview.
Buffalo-based attorney Christopher Grover said the VA’s paperwork flow is “kind of a big mystery,” even for those involved in the system.
Just to request a client’s case file from the VA, he said, can sometimes take six months. By contrast, other federal agencies like the Social Security Administration, can provide similar information immediately through electronic systems.
“Each regional office operates as its own ecosystem,” Grover said. “Some of them are similar, some of them are very different in how they are managed and run.”
Sandra Junker, director of the Tioga County Veterans Services Agency, noted that veterans are still paid for the claims they received from the time they are entitled to them — often leading to a large check once the paperwork is finalized.
Despite the statistics, many local veterans say they have had positive experiences in the VA system. Jerry Lennox, commander of the Elmira American Legion Post 443 in Elmira, said many veterans he knows have been satisfied.
“They had to do better because right now — with all the veterans that have come back from Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, Afghanistan — they’ve had to improve,” he said. “But they’re definitely doing good.”
Others are less conciliatory. Bert Proper, commander of the American Legion Post 80 in Binghamton, said he finished his service in 1992. But for various reasons, his claim was not finalized until 2005.
He has seen other veterans have trouble navigating the complex bureaucracy as well.
“It gets kind of disappointing,” Proper said.
Junker, of Tioga County, said while the process may be frustrating, the Buffalo office does have a lot of work to process. The paper records are stored in a “huge” room in the regional VA headquarters there.
“They’re from floor to ceiling,” she recalled of a recent visit. “Those records are new claims, old claims waiting for information — whatever it is…there’s just a lot.”
SREILLY@Gannett.com http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/05/26/buffalo-region-va-disability-delays/9599581/