2022 was a year of massive growth for the Department of Veterans Affairs, expanding benefits eligibility to more than 3.5 million veterans following the passage of the PACT Act, improving veterans’ user experience with centralized applications, creating new workforce strategies to attract top talent and more.

Going into 2023, VA is leveraging that momentum to continuously improve veteran services…

While VA is processing claims “faster than ever before,” according to McDonough, the agency is still preparing for backlog increases.

“We anticipate the numbers increasing as we’ve had a number of claims that we’ve had to hold. We haven’t yet had the authority to process the 200,000 PACT claims, and we’re actively working to encourage more veterans to file right now,” Senior Advisor for Policy, Performing the Delegable Duties of the Under Secretary for Benefits Josh Jacobs said during a December 2022 media roundtable. “The backlog is going to increase, but we’re prepared to tackle it.” … Read the full article here.