Army pushes VA to process disability claims faster

Army pushes VA to process disability claims faster
Gregg Zoroya
USA TODAY
April 4, 2013

The Department of Veterans Affairs is under growing pressure to reduce a mountain of pending veteran disability claims, and a new voice has been added to the chorus — the U.S. Army.

The Army has spent tens of millions of dollars and doubled staffing for a joint program with the VA aimed at cutting the Army's backlog of soldiers waiting to leave the service because of being wounded, ill or injured.

The number of ailing soldiers waiting to leave the service has grown from 18,000 in 2011 to more than 27,000, largely because the VA is not bringing more manpower to the task, Army officers told USA TODAY.

"The ideal situation would be if they could add some capacity. That means adding some people to do (disability) ratings," says Brig. Gen. Lewis Boone, director of the Army's disability evaluation system.

The VA says its resources are taxed to the limit trying to reduce its own caseload of 900,000 pending disability claims from veterans of all past and present wars. It cannot spare more rating evaluation specialists for the Army program, VA official Danny Pummill says.
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I guess this was all forgotten about too

Yesterday came and went without the DoD and the VA meeting the July 1, 2008 deadline to make several improvements to the medical evaluation board (MEB), physical evaluation board (PEB), and to report to Congress on the advisability of consolidating the DoD and VA disability evaluation systems. These requirements were part of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act and were passed into law as PUBLIC LAW 110-181 [H.R. 4986].

There are many important and vital rights that were granted by Congress in passing the law. Those rights depend on the DoD and the VA acting swiftly to publish regulations to improve processes, eliminate discrepancies between military and VA ratings, assign independent medical doctors to those members at the medical evaluation board, and to report to Congress.

and probably this one too

Disability review board 'invite' letters going to 75,000 veterans
By TOM PHILPOTT
Stars and Stripes
Published: January 19, 2012

On combat patrol several years ago, a U.S. soldier suffered two attacks from improvised explosive devices in a 24-hour-period. The first one rattled him and killed his buddy. The second one blew him out of his vehicle and knocked him unconscious.

The Army would medically separate this soldier with a 10-percent disability rating, even though his medical records showed symptoms of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

This case, and many like it, occurred before Congress in 2008 ordered military branches to clean up their disability evaluation systems and end practices that had underrated medical conditions of ill and injured members.

Awe shucks,,,since they forgot about the claim pile being that large back in June of 2009, they don't remember much at all.