Examining VA Efforts to Decrease Delays in Veterans’ Disability Compensation Claims
House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs
2025-04-09
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for VA disability compensation exams. VA cannot make a decision on a veteran's claim until all development is completed. Although I hear from veterans about how frustrating the wait is for a decision to be made, many times VA effort to obtain records and or exams leads to an award for disability compensation. On the other hand, overdevelopment is when VA takes unnecessary steps to obtain records or exams. if existing documents in the veteran's claims file are sufficient to support the claim, VA should not schedule a government-funded disability exam. Overdevelopment forces veterans to wait longer than necessary for a decision on their claims and can lead to incorrect decisions. Unnecessary exams also waste veterans' time and money. Further, if a veteran misses a VA scheduled exam without good cause and they do not reschedule, VA automatically denies the veteran's claim even when it was unnecessary for VA to schedule the exam in the first place. H.R. 2137, the Review Every Veteran's Claims Act will absolutely fix this injustice. Overdevelopment also drives government waste because VA pays contracted exam vendors for every exam, even those that were not necessary. In fiscal year 2023, about 2.4 million exams were completed, a number that rose to approximately 3.2 million in fiscal year 24. Contracted exam vendors were paid for nearly 95% of those exams. In December 2024 report, in the 2024 report, the VA Office of Inspector General, the IG, found that VA spent about $1.4 million on unnecessary exams from April through September 2023. The total amount of wasted taxpayer dollars each fiscal year is likely much higher. The OIG review did not cover the full fiscal year or examine all types of claims of decisions, both approvals and denials. We have heard from OIG and the VA employees that overdevelopment mistakes are due to an inadequate training, claims processors, as well as confusing and inconsistent guidance.
To address overdevelopment, VA created an Overdevelopment Reduction Task Force. This task force recommended dozens of actions, including targeted quality reviews, updating policy guidance, and increased training. I look forward to hearing from VA today on the progress made in implementing the task force's recommendations. Particularly, I'm interested in whether the VA has implemented a plan to evaluate the effectiveness of its efforts using clear result-driven metrics for success. And I would like to hear about any efforts VA is undertaking to further enhance its strategies to decrease overdevelopment. Finally, I look forward to discussing whether VA will implement technology to ensure that every claims processor who overdevelops a claim learns from that mistake. The National Work Queue, also known as NWQ, electronically distributed the majority of VA claims workloads across all regional offices. The National Work Queue has largely decreased decision wait times, thankfully. A key feature of the National Work Queue is that when a claims processor defers a claim for development, it's returned to the National Work Queue. The National Work Queue often then routes the claim to a different claims processor at another regional office for additional action. We have heard about cases where one claims processor after another claims processor makes the same overdevelopment error in the same veteran's claim. These repeated mistakes are so-called avoidable deferrals have resulted in months or years long delays for veterans even before a claims processor realizes that the development efforts were unnecessary. The current system only notifies the most recent claims processor to my understanding that they committed an overdevelopment error. All the other previous claims processors who committed the same mistake in the same claim are actually never notified which way that's what we need clarification on and therefore do not learn from that specific mistake. November, 2024 letter then under secretary for benefits, Dr. Jacobs informed me that there are no technological barriers preventing VA from notifying all claims processors who have made the same overdevelopment stake in a single claim.
Mr. Jacobs told me the VA would conduct a pilot study to determine the value of additional functionality. I look forward to hearing about the study progress and any findings under the current administration. Every veteran and survivor deserves a timely decision on their claim decisions. Wait times will decrease if we can reduce or eliminate over development. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about VA's efforts to do so.
I now yield to the ranking member. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you all so much for being here today. You all have heard me say this a million times. I'm going to say it a million more times. Everything we do on this subcommittee is on behalf of our veterans. Everything. It's to serve our veterans. And today, that means making sure that the VA systems used to process disability claims for our veterans work the best they can. It also means equipping and empowering the employees who serve the veterans. We need them to be able to do their best work without unnecessary limits or undermining their importance to the system.
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