VA still battling errors, claims backlog

VA still battling errors, claims backlog

By Tristan Hallman - Gannett Washington Bureau
Posted : Saturday Jun 19, 2010 10:03:41 EDT

“When [the VA is] processing 1 million claims, 1 percent error is 10,000 veterans,” De Planque said at a recent House subcommittee hearing. “That is completely unacceptable.”

Retired Marine Sgt. Michael Madden of Prescott, Ariz., knows what it means to battle. In Vietnam, he was shot in the head, forcing him to undergo spinal cord surgery that has left him in a wheelchair.

But the fight was not over for Madden. After being told by a Veterans Affairs doctor to file for funding to make his home and car wheelchair-adaptable, Madden has spent the last decade in a jungle of bureaucracy, legalese and claim denials.

More than $6,000 of out-of-pocket expenses and a suspended Arizona driver’s license later, Madden is still searching for answers.

“I find it kind of ironic that the VA tells me that I can’t drive without the equipment, and then tells me that I can’t have the equipment for a service-connected disability,” Madden said.

Madden is not alone in struggling with the bureaucracy of the Veterans Benefits Administration, the VA sub-agency that handles veterans’ disability claims. Seeing the challenges VBA faces, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki has made fighting inefficiency a top priority.

Shinseki’s main target is a backlog of claims. As of June 8, a total of 186,777 claims — 35.8 percent of total pending claims — were still unprocessed after VBA’s new 125-day processing goal, according to Veterans Affairs.
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VA still battling errors, claims backlog