From News Nation:
“Thousands of veterans’ disability claims delayed, some for
years”
About 32,000 veterans have had disability claims submitted
through the Veterans Affairs website delayed because of a technical issue. A
spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs told NewsNation that some
of these claims go back to 2018. “Specifically, these claims were not
automatically routed for processing once submitted, leading to a delay for
these veterans,” Terrence Hayes, VA press secretary, said in an emailed
statement to NewsNation. Claims were delayed after a technical issue with the
integration of two systems on the VA.gov website. Hayes said this affected
about one-half of 1% of all claims submitted. According to Hayes, the
Department of Veterans Affairs implemented a solution in February “shortly
after” the issue was discovered.
Military.com, which first reported on this story, said that
affected veterans began receiving letters this month notifying them their
claims may not have been reviewed. In the letters, according to Military.com,
the Department of Veterans Affairs wrote that it was conducting a thorough
review and that the veterans themselves did not need to take any action. They
were advised to pay attention to their mail for more information, Military.com
reported.
Hayes said the VA has identified all the affected veterans,
and their claims are being processed. Once veterans were identified, the
Department of Veterans Affairs worked on a new way to take these delayed claims
and transfer them to the correct system for processing. “We are processing these
claims with the utmost urgency, and we will ensure that the effective date for
every one of these veterans is preserved,” Hayes said. That means if the claims
are granted, the benefits a veteran received will be backdated to the original
date they filed it, or sooner, if applicable by law. “We deeply apologize to
these veterans for the delay, and we will ensure they receive the benefits
they’ve earned as quickly as possible,” Hayes said. “We will also continue to
review our technology, processes and systems to prevent such technical issues from
impacting veterans in the future.” This includes creating new operational and
technological measures to flag delayed claims as soon as they are not processed
correctly, Hayes said.
More than 1.7 million disability compensation and pension
claims were processed in 2022. The number of pending claims was 1,043,961 in
early August, according to Military.com. Of these, 274,148 are older than 125
days. Aging information technology infrastructure has long plagued the
Department of Veterans Affairs, Military.com wrote. In its 2024 fiscal year
budget request, the VA is proposing $6.4 billion for the Office of Information
Technology to continue to upgrade this infrastructure and $1.9 billion to
convert to a new electronic health records system, according to the outlet.
^ Once again the VA continues to fail the Veterans. ^
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/military/veterans-disability-claims-glitch/
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