Problems with VA nothing new to veterans

VA Unopened Claims

In Baltimore, investigators discovered that an employee had inappropriately stored thousands of documents, including some that contained Social Security data, in his office "for an extensive period of time." About 8,000 documents, including 80 claims folders, unprocessed mail and Social Security information of dead or incarcerated veterans, were stored in the employee's office, Halliday said. Kristen Ruell, an employee at the VA's Pension Management Center in Philadelphia, told the committee that mail routinely "sat in boxes untouched for years" at the pension office. Once, after becoming concerned that unopened mail was being shredded, Ruell opened the boxes and took photos. Instead of addressing the problem, she said, VA supervisors enacted a policy prohibiting taking photos.

This is from 2008

VA’s order Thursday to its 57 regional offices to stop shredding documents after veterans’ claims materials were found in piles of paper waiting to be destroyed.

Then this policy came about

The policy comes as the VA continues to investigate improper shredding at a St. Petersburg veterans benefits office and 56 other regional offices in nearly every state. The policy calls for the appointment of a records control team in Washington, D.C., to oversee the handling of documents. It also would lead to the hiring of records officers in each benefits office to do the same on a local level. And before shredding any document, two VA employees, including a supervisor, would have to sign off, according to a draft of the policy obtained by the St. Petersburg Times on Friday. The policy comes after the discovery last month of nearly 500 veterans' claims documents improperly set aside for shredding in 41 VA benefits offices.

But as news "breaks" on what is going on now, veterans remember what happened after the same problems were reported so very long ago.

November 13, 2008 - A high-ranking U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs administrator from Guilderland has been placed on paid leave in the wake of an investigation into his office. Joseph Collorafi was suspended last month as chief of veterans affairs at the New York City regional VA office, said Keith Thompson, acting director of the office. The investigation revealed that someone in the regional office intentionally entered claim documents from veterans with incorrect dates — called "backdating" — into an internal database, VA spokeswoman Alison Aikele said Wednesday. "They would make it look like they were processing claims faster than they really were," said Aikele, who works in Washington, D.C. Changing the dates made it appear that the management was not "severely underperforming," according to Aikele. She said the leadership of the office in Manhattan was replaced and the individuals who left would not be returning. She maintained that no veterans were affected by the backdating.