“The Department of Veterans Affairs is processing its backlog of disability claims faster than ever before, but is looking to accelerate this pace through an automation pilot it launched last month.”
“The VA is running the automation pilot through its newly created Office of Automated Benefit Delivery, an initiative that has the potential to dramatically reduce the time it takes to process an individual claim.”
“The pilot is processing claims within a day or two, while the traditional method of processing these claims currently takes well over 100 days, on average.”
“’Automation is the way that we’ll really break through this backlog and get vets their earned benefits as quickly as possible,’ VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters Tuesday.”
“The VA currently has around 260,000 claims in its backlog right now, a significant increase compared to approximately 70,000 backlogged cases the agency had before the start of the pandemic.”
“Despite COVID, we’re processing these claims faster than ever before in VA’s history… The challenge is that the claims are also coming in faster than ever before, making it difficult to drive the backlog down,’ McDonough said…”
“Rob Reynolds, the acting deputy undersecretary of VA’s Office of Automated Benefit Delivery, said the agency launched the pilot last month to eliminate unnecessary medical examinations, streamline workflows and reduce manual processes…” Read the full article here.
Source: VA launches automation pilot to process veteran disability claims faster – By Jory Heckman, January 18, 2022. Federal News Network.
