Want to know where your VA disability rating file is?

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The following is compliments of a website called the VA Watchdog. Google it. Thought this would be a good place to share the absurdity. ​
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"Dear Jim; Where is my claim? How long will it take?"

Unfortunately, there is no answer. The time it takes to complete your claim is entirely unpredictable. ​

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This is an actual photo of your file stored and waiting.

Do you really believe that anyone at VA could find it for you?
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Jeffrey A. Milman, Esq. Founding Partner at Hodes-Milman-Lieback
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How To Track Your Claim

You can't. Forget about it. Seriously. Really. You can't track your claim.

Were you told that your claim is in the decision phase? Of course it is...EVERY claim is in the decision phase from the moment it comes in the door of that impregnable fortress the VA calls a Regional Office.There is no system in place that allows you to view the status of your claim or any progress it may be making.
All of the places VA provides like IRIS, the toll free number, that Ebenefits site and so on don't work. Those things do not go to your Regional Office where your claims folder (C-File) is located, they go to "call centers".
Those are provided as distractions to keep you occupied while VA operates in nearly total chaos. They don't know where your folder is on a given day. They aren't going to take time to find it for you and tell you anything that's happening.

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VA uses the rationale that if they opened up phone lines to veterans so that you could talk to them, you and 1,000,000 others would probably call and bitch about it every day.
Time taken to reassure you is time taken away from working on your claim.
If you have to know the status of your claim because you are in financial trouble, you have already made your first mistake.
VA is not responsible for your financial woes. VA does not approve benefits because you need the money. VA approves benefits only because you have a service connected condition that meets the criteria to be awarded a benefit.
There is nothing at all in VA disability law that tells the VA that they must consider that you haven't been able to pay for the new plasma screen TV so they should move your claim ahead of others.

You file a claim. If you did it the smart way, you sent your claim in yourself and provided all the data VA needed. You mailed it using Certified Mail and Return Receipt Requested.

You got that little green postcard back so you know that your VA Regional Office got your claim. It made it into the mail room!

From the mail room the claim is triaged to the appropriate stations. It may go to compensation, education, home loans and so on.

It gets in line. The line is huge. There are 57 VA Regional Offices and there are over one million claims in the backlog. The VA receives more claims each day than it resolves. The backlog grows every day.

Your claim is in the line in the order it was received. You get no priority because you need the money...everybody needs the money.

Your claim may be headed to a section where 10 people are working. As each one closes a claims folder and sends out the award letter, he or she makes room for the next folder in that long line.

That's it. There's no mystery to it. Your claim is not tracked daily or weekly or even monthly. It's just sitting there in line waiting its turn on the desk of a rater.

That means you should plan your living expenses accordingly. Don't rely on VA money coming to you next month so you can make the mortgage payment. Plan and spend as if you will never get any VA money...you may not.

The MMWR isn't accurate. The numbers are an attempt to look good.

However...that isn't always a good indicator because of "brokering" claims to other Regional Offices. If your claim is way behind and your VARO is at max output, your claim may be at another VARO for processing there. Nobody will tell you about that or just how it works.

Be patient. Take a hobby like reading War and Peace in the original language.

Your claim will be done when it's done and no sooner.
 
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I am not saying you are wrong, but would like to ask how you would solve the problem?

Let's say you just got hired as the head of the VA claims process. What are you going to do on your first day? Don't just say fire everybody, because that will not will not solve the problem. You will then have to train somebody and that is going to take time.

Let's say you have a budget of 25 million. Spend it how you will. How about outsourcing? Pay somebody to digitize all the records? That is going to cost a fair share of the money. You could hire new employees to burn through the backlog. For 25 million, you can hire 625 fulltime employees at $40,000 per year for that. Of course you are going to have to train them too.

I am not trying to take away from any deserving veterans claims. God knows if anybody deserves it, veterans do. I just want to see people bring credible solutions to the table. Posting a picture of a file room is not a solution. It's a way to inflame a situation and get people upset. It doesn't solve anything.

So I will play the bad guy here. Flame away, but in the same breath that you cuss my name, tell me how you would fix the problem.

Joe
 
I've spoke personally with a recently retired VA rater and the the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the main cause of the growing backlogs, you also have veterans that wait years after separation and now all of a sudden want to file a compensation claim and then you have to look at the daily appeals that get filed that take away from new claims, thing of that nature, also Vietnam claims get priority and fast tracked
System isn't perfect at all but you have to look at it from the VA, theirs only 57 RO's but you have millions on claims yearly, whether its a new claim, an appeal or a vet filing for a rate increase, so you have to factor all these things, and when they do get new employees, they have to get trained just as if they was going through AIT
Still average timelines for a Vet Comp Claim is 8-10 months some shorter most longer
That's why I hate to see soldiers who go through IDES complain because we get our claims done while we getting a check compared to some vets who sit and wait with no income coming in
 
I'm a big believer is how things are cyclical, particularly in the military/federal government and have noted that changes are about a 5-7 year process; I think/or hope that this is one of these. I am just wagging it here, but about 6 years ago (my 5-7 year theory) the surge in Iraq began. I was there and got the tee shirt ;), as part of the demob process (I'm a guard guy) we were told about ALL the benefits available to us, particularly the VA bennies and most importantly the dollars that had been allotted for service connected disabilities. My point is that for the first time in my military career and as part of a mandatory demob process there were resources out there we didn't know about in the VA. We know this year the VA has had a record setting number of claims thus far and we are at the "peak" of that cycle. Now consider the amount of press the VA has been receiving (mostly bad) which I think has additionally joggled the minds of veterans of Vietnam and the first Gulf War and the benefits they have not previously filed for which leads us to where we are now.

I really think this caught the VA by complete surprise; for whatever reason they didn't see the storm coming. Realizing the position they were in and lack of trained RSOs the VA petitioned for and received more resources (dollars) from Congress to hire RSOs to reduce the backlog. I have been a supervisor in the federal civil service system for 20 years; from the time that I announce a position opening (after fighting HRO for the position to begin with) to actually having that selection show up to work is a minimum of 12 weeks, that's assuming nobody had sour grapes about the applicant selected and protested the hiring which could delay the hiring process even longer. Add to that the time it takes to train a new hire RSO (I've heard 4 months), now you are looking at 6-8 months for the new hire to open their first claim. Oh by the way they are automating the claims sequence so I am sure there is a learning curve there as well.

I don't know (because I haven't checked) what pay grade VA RSOs are hired at; I suspect it cant be more than GS10s, somebody out there might know. At the moment I don't think the claims process is allotted the amount of time it takes to completely vet the claim it merits because of the back log. I am assuming supervisors are under pressure to produce results, therefore are probably placing time constraints on the RSOs to produce results (read completed claim). Remember this though, employees are rated by their performance, so theoretically an RSO who completes 8 claims a day is more productive than his cohort that might do 6. Therefore when performance evaluations are due, the supervisor will theoretically rate the employee who completes more claims during the day HIGHER than the one who completes less. It DOESN'T mean the your claim received the attention it deserved.

My final thought and I will get off my soap box. I will cut them (the VA) some slack because I understand the process and sense their frustration. The process doesn't take away the sting of having to wait on your claim, but you are placing your faith on them prosecuting your claimed conditions correctly and getting what you deserve from your service connected disabilities.
 
Hey Joe, I really think we need a joke forum, I have tons and they are all bad :rolleyes:! (but funny)
 
akbanone said:
Hey Joe, I really think we need a joke forum, I have tons and they are all bad :rolleyes:! (but funny)
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I agree! BTW, great insight in your previous post. I also appreciated Combat Eng's post as well. Understanding the process and offering a solution to a problem are really the only way things get fixed. Most people like to poke holes in a system, but that is as far as they will go.

I truly do believe the VA is working hard to get the issues fixed. They are pushing new technology and working at hacking away at the stack. Two wars spanning 12 years, millions of service members and previous war veterans is a lot to bite off. Add that with the "instant gratification" society we live in today, and I will tell you I wouldn't want the job.

On a final not, I couldn't agree with you more Combat Eng. I hate to see guys in the IDES process get all bent out of shape when there claim hits 60 days. I have been there and done that, but just as you said, I was getting paid and I appreciated that. I would have gladly given up my place in line to see the attention my IDES case got, vs the Gulf War Veteran with PTSD sleeping on the street.
 
One more observation then I'm done for the night :p . When an government entity (IDES/VA) places a number of days to process a SM from start to the completion of the IDES process, that number now becomes a measuring stick for all to see. I think that the IDES process means well, its just not living up to those expectations thus the frustrations in the system; hey we all have a life after this right??
 
I am grateful for the IDES process, but there are flaws in the system itself. They mean well by having a goal of payment 30 days after final day of retirement or service, but it is not the case. The first problem is the military processes IDES cases with lightning speed in the MEB/PEB stages to get rid of service members that can no longer perform, which should be the case. The VA gives proposed ratings, the service member gets excited about the prompt decision, then the service member gets out thinking he or she will be expecting the proposed ratings, but must wait an additional time period to finalize the SAME ratings that were already looked at and awarded. Why the long wait to do something twice. Look at the stuff once and finalize it right then and there. This would save the raters time by completing the task once. Rating is proposed in OCT, but no real final decision is made until all PTDY is over (good to have all the leave possible to continue pay without stressing) usually 90 days. A final decision is then re-looked at in FEB (the day after retirement) and finalized in JULY. Makes no sense when it was done back in OCT. The wait is painful because of the proposed ratings which don't mean a thing until the real rating is complete. This puts a major hold on life, job searches, payments and other other benefits that comes along with the final rating. Grateful, but tired of the wait and feel so sorry for those who have no idea what is happening with their claims.
 
Under current budgetary guidelines and constraints, the DoVA is striving to provide the best product and services available to all military veterans and soon-to-be military veterans within the DoD IDES MEB/PEB process.

As with any government or civilian organization, a constant evaluation of its internal processes may warrant change which shall potentially result in temporary uncertainty while effecting overall efficiency in a worker's job performance.

Case-in-point, a couple of years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced new regulations that liberalized and relaxed PTSD evidence requirements in order to make it easier for veterans to receive benefits. The new regulations eliminated the need for veterans to document specific events that caused their PTSD. Veterans are now only required to show a diagnosis of PTSD and that it was related to service overall, not a specific event. This was a very good initiative that allowed military veterans to obtain well-needed disability compensation and treatment. But, the amounts of DoVA claims for PTSD significantly increased without the balance of properly trained employees to efficiently and effectively adjudicate disability compensation claims.

Moreover, "Effective immediately, due to a consistent decrease in budgetary spending, the DoVA shall no longer provide military disability compensation benefits to its veterans. From this point forward, all current allocations of funding shall transfer to support other O&M functionality within the DoVA...Disability compensation was a tax free monetary benefit paid to Veterans with disabilities that were the result of a disease or injury incurred or aggravated during active military service...It's been determined that the military veteran will receive significantly enhanced DoVA Health Care by the advent of an increased budgetary allocation and additional personnel support..."

With that all said, I offer the pondering of the thought of not having a military disability compensation benefits program within the DoVA as creatively annotated above without any official DoVA validation of merit. Wow, imagine all of the residual complications extending from the implementation of such a policy :eek: --> :confused: --> :mad: --> :(!

Thus, possessing well-informed knowledge is truly a powerful equalizer.

Best Wishes!
 
Once again you have to think about it, the reason it takes so long for them to finalize your propose ratings is because they do another review of your claim in order to see if its possible for a rate increase, Also when it is time for them to finalize your ratings, I doubt that's the claim the work on tight then and their, so theirs claims inline waiting to be finalized , and while you wait you still have your Retiremrnt pay coming in or if you got a severance check you should still have some money in the bank
The problem I feel where soldiers run into Is that they don't plan for the worse when it comes to being retired/ separated when you didn't expect it this early n ones career..They go on terminal leave still getting that army paycheck, they want to travel, makeup for loss time with family, things like that, but not putting money away, or budgeting to prepare for a wait incase that VA check takes some time
So when that day comes and that army pay stops then they scratched their heads, Theirs a lot of resources out their, Vocational Rehab is one that should be used by all of us, it's one of those VA benefits that we don't have to wait till after our date out the Army to use

Also for us soldiers that has proposed ratings and show that we are eligible for the Va Specially Adapted Housing, put a claim for it now, It's a 63,000$ grant that can be used to make a disable soldier home more accessible for them to be more independent and also what funds of it you don't use can be put towards you mortgage, which will benefit you n the long run
 
I keep telling myself to keep my mouth shut but I don't listen very well. I got in on the tail end of the DES, legacy system. I tried to get my changed to the IDES but that was a no go. The VA is broke and it is hurting a lot of people. My VA case was rushed through and I have a great deal of mistakes in it to prove it. I didn't want it rushed because it was to late and we had to file bankruptcy before we lost the house and everything else. I was talked into contacting my Congressman who pushed it through and now I'm being told I will most likely have to wait 3 1/2 years to get it corrected, at least I'm getting paid. I am once more being told to contact my Congressman by the DAV, personally I don't know what to do because I know there are people worse off than I am out there. I have my personal opinion on why the system is broke and that is where it will stay. I just hope they get me done in 3 1/2 yrs but would like it better if it were 2 1/2 yrs.
 
Awesome thread. Love all of the input! Thank you Jason Perry for starting this site! You're a god among men good sir.

Cheers Bloaks!
 
I see some very valid points in there. I also believe there is a dynamic they didn't talk about that I feel is a huge problem as well. It is teaching old dogs to do new tricks. A newly hired person is easy to transition to a new system, but a 10, 20 or even 30 year employee is hard to work with. I see it everyday at work at DCMA. The agency has lot's of great new ideas for harnessing technology, but many of the workforce fight against it with everything they have. Statements such as "in the old days" and " these new systems make my job so hard" are common place. The growing pains at the VA are no different I am sure.

Add that with all the claims coming from across generations, only makes it harder.
 
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