The VA Continues to fall Behind in its Claims Processing
More people are hired and more decisions are made, yet the VA continues to lag behind and veterans suffer longer and longer delays. Last month, the VA decided 107,462 cases, a record number. Yet the backlog has grown to over 1,000,000. And its worse ever for appeals, the first appeal to the Decision Review Officer typically takes between 9-16 months in Denver, over two years in California, and 6-9 months in Florida.
More than 567,000 benefits claims had been awaiting completion by VBA workers for more than 125 days. That’s down almost 13,000 applications from the start of August, but up nearly 27,000 from January and 2,000 from June, when Veterans' Affairs officials announced the reassignment of hundreds of claims processors to start attacking the problem.