The Pending Claims Backlog

The below is a VA Office of Inspector General report on the pending claims backlog.  What is most interesting is that it confirms what many of us have known for years, the VA plays games with how it reports the number of claims waiting for a decision in order for it to make itself look more efficient than it is.

The report looks at the claim that the VA reported it had reduced the pending backlog from a peak of 611,000 in March 2013 to 71,690 at the end of September 2016 and at the end of May 2018, the reported pending backlog was 70,537.

The report was a review of whether VA’s reported statistics related to the pending disability claims backlog accurately included all disability claims over 125 days old requiring rating decisions.  OIG found that VA’s reported backlog did not include all claims that had been awaiting rating decisions for more than 125 days during the first and second quarters of FY 2016.  OIG estimated VA staff completed about 63,600 other EPs that required rating decisions that took over 125 days to complete but that VA did not count as part of the backlog. As a result, the OIG estimated that, in its completed backlog, VA only reported about 79 percent of the claims that required rating decisions that took over 125 days. More importantly, VA generally prioritized its workload of rating EPs over other EPs, resulting in significant delays in processing other EPs that were older and required rating decisions.

VA Office of Inspector General Report on the Pending Claims Backlog

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