Longer Wait For Disability Benefits In VA Secretary's Home State

While veterans know the care they get depends on what state they live in, the average American has no clue. Simply assuming this one nation treats all veterans the same is part of the reason they have suffered this long. The other factor is too many reporters take the narrow view. They report in lumps based on what they are told today completely forgetting about what they reported last year. When we're talking about this many years of war fighters coming home, especially National Guardsmen and Reservist, we've had plenty of time to get it right but expected the to wait plenty of time to get the care they were promised.

While the following report is out of Honolulu, you can read what states do a better job on this interactive map from Center for Investigative Reporting. Map: Where is the veterans' backlog the worst?

Longer Wait For Disability Benefits In VA Secretary's Home State
Honolulu Civil Beat
By Kery Murakami
04/01/2013

Although the federal Veterans Administration has been taking heat nationally for a growing backlog and increased times to process disabled veterans benefits, the office in VA Secretary Eric Shinseki’s home state of Hawaii has been doing particularly poorly in processing claims in a timely manner.

And despite promises to improve its performance, agency data examined by Civil Beat, shows that in the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Honolulu office, veterans are waiting months longer and the backlog of disability claims has gotten significantly worse than a year ago.

In January, the latest period for which figures were available, 70 percent of compensation disability claims nationally had been pending longer than the goal of 125 days. That’s brought protests from veterans groups and criticism from Congress. However, the backlog was worse in the Honolulu office, where 77 percent of those claims had been pending longer than the 125 days.

The backlog of cases in Honolulu has grown since January 2012, when 69.4 percent of similar claims had been pending for that long.

It was also taking longer in the Honolulu office than the average nationally to process disability claims that require an assessment of the severity of a disability. Nationally, it took the VA an average of 279 days to complete such claims. It the Honolulu office, it took almost four months longer — an average of 390.2 days.
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UPDATE out of Nashville

Nashville VA office failures cited in report
Nashville staffers did not properly serve veterans in 4 of 5 areas, inspection finds
The Tennessean
Apr 1, 2013
One veteran lost $10,000 in disability benefits.

Others underwent incomplete evaluations for traumatic brain injury.

Homeless veterans went without help because no one tried to find them.

These are the service failures highlighted in a report issued last week by the Office of Inspector General that determined the Veterans Affairs Regional Office in Nashville came up short on four of five measures. The report was based on an inspection conducted in September. Edna MacDonald, the director of the Nashville office, did not dispute the findings and submitted a checklist for correcting the problems.

However, a spokeswoman noted that the report is not a comprehensive evaluation. The Nashville regional office, which has jurisdiction over VA services in the entire state, has an overall 91.2 percent accuracy record for rating claims, said public affairs officer Jan Dew.
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