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USNDW wrote:

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So the Secretary has had calls go unanswered? And then this is the first anyone is hearing about a planned improvement?

I heard about it last year, but it isn't something that can be solved overnight.  First of all you have to understand the magnitude of the situation.  Last year one call center, staffed by about 90 full time people taking calls, received over 16,000 calls in a one hour period.  It is estimated that about 75 million calls come in each year.  I think VA has 7 call centers so we are talking about over 600 full time employees taking calls.  At 16,000 calls in one hour we are talking about each person at that one call center handling 177 calls an hour, or about 3 calls per minute.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that simply hiring more people is the solution.  In fact I don't think that it would be possible for VA to hire enough people to do this.  Obviously it would lessen the workload if claims processing could be speeded up since there would likely be fewer calls, but just how many people would VA need to hire to quickly process the 2 million claims currently being received each year if those claims must be processed in accordance with the laws currently on the books.  Again, I don't think that VA has the capacity to hire that many people.   VA already has over a quarter of a million employees, including about 4,000 Rating Specialists and DROs.

The leadership at VA has concluded that more manpower alone will not solve the problem and they are looking at improved IT capabilities to attack the massive backlog; however, IT makeovers are tremendously expensive and VA cannot simply go to the petty cash fund and draw out the type of money needed to do this.  They have now received additional funds from Congress and are in the process of upgrading their systems. 

I have had a conversation with the Under Secretary for Benefits about this and I believe that he is dedicated to improving things and is sincere in his approach to this problem.  At the same time I have no illusions as to the magnitude of the problems brought about by the massive crush of work that VA Regional Offices are currently tasked with doing.  I experienced it first hand and I suppose that I can understand on some level how those who have not been there and done that would have trouble realizing just how massive it is.

Cruiser 

  

RLTW64 wrote:

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The VA should have prepared better for this situation as they knew it was coming soon, but now they are playing the catch up game. 
 

I can see where an outsider looking in would come to that conclusion; however, it wasn't that simple.  First of all VA can only do what Congress gives it the funding to do and over the past 20 year period VA has been hit with the perfect storm; one crisis situation after another with no breaks in between.  Like I said in my previous post, I suppose you just had to be there to understand what was happening.

Actually this perfect storm had it's inception in 1988 when Congress authorized the then named U.S. Court for Veterans Appeals.  By the time this Court was up and running the first Gulf War was underway in 1990 and in 1991 Congress passed the Agent Orange Act of 1991. 

The Gulf War brought with it the legislation involving undiagnosed illnesses, something that not only resulted in a flood of claims but also something that VA had never encountered before.  I was a Rating Specialist at the time working on one of the Gulf War teams and I can tell you that these were difficult claims to work.  Not only were they difficult, but it was not at all uncommon for each claim to involve 25 or 30 issues, or more.  I had one in which the guy claimed to have 57 different undiagnosed symptoms.  These were very time consuming claims and we had them stacked everywhere in piles all over the floor and on every available table.

Right in the middle of this mess with the Gulf War claims VA had to start re-writing 38 CFR Part 4.  Every single section that was re-written resulted in an increase in the workload for a couple of reasons.  First, the Rating Specialist had to consider every claim under two different sets of criteria which slowed the number of decisions that a Rating Specialist could make each day.  Secondly, each change resulted in a flurry of remands from BVA since any file at BVA when the change was enacted, or any still at the RO for that matter, had to be re-done.

And then two new wars got underway which further increased the workload.

While all of this was going on there were new conditions being added to the Agent Orange presumptives.  We realized just how many men have prostate cancer when this was added to the list; and when diabetes was added it seemed like there would be no end in sight.  The claims were just pouring in.

Superimposed on all of this were some Court decisions that went against VA which even though they were later overturned in the Circuit Court of Appeals still drained resources while this was ongoing.  And then there was Nehmer.  Everybody thinks of Nehmer in conjunction with the recent addition of heart disease to the Agent Orange presumptive list; however, Nehmer is not a recent decision.  I was assigned the task of reviewing the Nehmer cases for my RO that involved diabetes claims back in the mid-90s.

I realize that 20 years seems like a long time, and it is; however, when all of this started back then VA had reduced it's Regional Office manpower quite a bit and these events were hitting one on top of another during a time when Regional Offices were trying to hire and train new people to meet the increased workload.  Things only got worse as the 90's rolled over into 2000 and many of VA's experienced people (the baby boomers) simply got tired of the daily struggle to keep their heads above water, and they started retiring in droves.  I know because I was one of them.  I just said enough is enough.  Now they had new people training even newer people.

It's easy to say that VA should have been better prepared for this, but the truth is that they really couldn't adequately prepare for what hit them.  Most of the above events came with little to no lead time, and once you get in a crisis mode it's difficult to make wholesale changes.  I had several personal friends who were in high level leadership positions at VA Central Office (C&P Director, Deputy Under Secretary, etc.) during this period and I can attest to the fact that they were all smart, highly motivated, and very dedicated people who were doing everything they could to keep the ship righted.  I felt sorry for a couple of them who after decades of service to veterans were driven out by the whims of public opinion.  It was a damn shame because they were good people who were put in a near impossible position.

Cruiser 

Some of you guys who think that you know exactly what the problems are and how to solve them do nothing but demonstrate just how little you do know about it when you say some of the things that you say.  In other words, you really don't know what it is that you don't know.  You've filed a few claims, talked to some others who have done the same, and you read web sites like this one and think you've got it all figured out.  Ha!!!

I live in a community that has some auto assembly plants and I have friends and clients who work at those plants, both in management and on the assembly lines.  I think that I know a thing or two about cars.  Heck, I've bought and sold more than I can remember over the past 48 years starting with a neat little '53 Chevy.  I've had extensive dealings with auto dealerships and fought warranty battles with auto manufacturers.  I even got to wheel a NASCAR stocker around a high banked oval one day.  In other words I've been around the block more than a time or two with auto dealers and manufacturers probably to the extent that I have as much or more experience with the auto industry and you guys have with VA claims processing.

Guess what?  I don't know squat about what is involved in making cars at those auto assembly plants near my home.  The auto industry has certainly had as many problems and faced as many crises as VA has over the years, but despite my background with cars, I wouldn't begin to argue with and contradict what my friends who actually work in those plants have to say about the difficulties they face on a day to day basis building cars.  While something may look simple to me as an outsider, if they tell me that it isn't as simple as it looks, who am I to tell them that I know more about it than they do?  I might ask them to explain what it is that I'm not seeing or understanding and then I might ask more questions about why this or that wouldn't work; but I'm not about to tell them that they don't know what they are talking about because I haven't built a single car on an auto assembly line in my entire life.

Yet that is how I often feel in this forum.  Folks who have never sat in a cubicle at VA and writtten a Rating Decision or developed a claim, much less sat there day after day or year after year processing hundreds or thousands of claims stand well outside looking in and act like they actually know what they are talking about.  Folks who have never been in the positions of the folks who manage and work in these operations on a daily basis are so certain that they  have all the answers that they dismiss just about everything they hear from the folks who have actually been there and done that.

I must admit that I ask myself every day why I debate this stuff with a few of you out there because it's obvious that you don't know your butts from holes in the ground when it comes to the topic of the difficulties faced by VA as it contends with the massive work overload that it has to deal with on a daily basis.  And I suppose that it's unfortunate that some of the most vocal in this regard also seem to be the most clueless.  The only answer I have for that it that I'm hoping that maybe something I say will help some of the other folks see through those few of you to whom I'm referring.

Cruiser

Vet2112 wrote:

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Are you certain of who it was you were actually talking to? She sure looked like a woman to me. Especially with the first name of Allison.

Oops, my bad.  I left out a word.  I should have said Deputy Undersecretary for Benefits.  HIS name is Michael.  Thankfully I am still able to tell the difference between a man and a woman, especially when we are talking about Gen. Allison Hickey and Col. Michael Cardarelli. 

http://www.va.gov/opa/bios/bio_cardarelli.asp

Cruiser