VA Claim in Appeal? Wait 639 Days

That's what Daniel Bertoni, director of education, workforce, and income security at the Government Accountability Office, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee this week on the need to improve how the department processes a growing mountain of disability claims.

Much of VA's problems in processing disability claims, which totaled 1.6 million in 2008, stems form the fact that the agency still handles paper claims.

But, Patrick Dunne, VA's undersecretary of benefits, told the committee that the department has a paperless processing initiative, which sooner or later will resolve the problem. Dunne did not provide a timeline for the truly paperless claims process. That's because in order to go paperless, VA first needs to do the business transformation thing. MITRE, the federally funded think tank, has been working on transformation for the Veterans Benefits Administration since 2006, and VBA has now enlisted Booz Allen Hamilton to help out, Dunne said.

Booz Allen, I'm sure vets with well-aged claims will be delighted to know, will provide VA with "business process re-engineering, organizational change management, workforce planning and organizational learning strategies to ensure that VBA positions itself to take best advantage of the technology solutions being developed," Dunne told the hearing.

I think VBA needs fewer buzz words and more action to fix its broken claims processing system.