VA system should start over, official says

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VA system should start over, official says
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 18, 2010 17:35:19 EDT

Bailing wire and bandages can’t save the veterans disability claims process, the Veterans Affairs Department’s chief technology officer said Thursday at a roundtable discussion about ways to cut the growing backlog of claims and improve accuracy.

“In my judgment, it cannot be fixed,” said Peter Levin. “We need to build a new system, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”

Levin’s comments came at a meeting organized by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to toss around ideas for repairing a system that has a backlog of about 1.1 million claims awaiting decisions and an error rate of 17 percent to 25 percent, depending on who is counting.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Va., the committee chairman, described the system as an “insult to veterans” who wait an average of six months for a initial decision on benefits and can wait for years if the decision is appealed.

“It looks like we are going backwards rather than forward,” Filner said. “No matter how much we raise the budget, no matter how many people we hire, the backlog seems to get bigger. People die before their claim is adjudicated. They lose their home. They lose their car.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/military_veterans_claims_031810w/