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Indiana (In): Indianapolis


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Another thing I just noticed: My last claim was a dependency claim in 2007. The claim was "opened" at 10 months after submittal and completed during the week that made it one year. So they have been slow to adjudicate for a long time (at least on my claims). One of the claims submitted a couple of months after mine, as I read, was adjudicated earlier and it just dawned on me that it was mistakenly sent to another VARO for adjudication, then sent back to Indianapolis and completed. So it goes.

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Another thing I just noticed: My last claim was a dependency claim in 2007. The claim was "opened" at 10 months after submittal and completed during the week that made it one year. So they have been slow to adjudicate for a long time (at least on my claims). One of the claims submitted a couple of months after mine, as I read, was adjudicated earlier and it just dawned on me that it was mistakenly sent to another VARO for adjudication, then sent back to Indianapolis and completed. So it goes.

"mistakenly sent to another VARO for adjudication" - sometimes when a VARO is backed-up, they'll farm their work out to other VAROs with lighter workload. ATL sent two of mine to Huntington VARO, and I received (what I think) were better results. Best of luck to you!

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No higher level math here. Using the VA Monday Morning Weekly Report data for AUG2011 and the Aspire data for AUG2011, the average age of every one of the 1092 completed claims processed by the Indianapolis VARO, in AUG2011, was about 310 days. This is interesting. The average time to complete the rating is listed as 252.6 days. The previous month it was 245.6. That time listed is the cumulative time to rate for all claims in the fiscal year 2011. SO the 1092 claims completed in AUG2011 is added to the approx 9400 other claims processed during the year. To get a seven day rise over approx 10500 claims means they must have a lot higher (average time to complete) time over the 1092 claims than that 252.6 average.

Now, more:

The VARO has told me in mid AUG2011 (and some other times since) that they had not yet gotten to my (then) 490 day old claim as it had not waited long enough and they work all claims in the order received. This means that they worked a large percentage of young (higher priority) claims and a few really old (regular) claims.

Comparing number of 01AUG claims <125 days (5443) and an average of 25% of those claims aging to >125 days old with the number of 31AUG claims <125 days (5478) and the new claims(~1718) (Average age 15 days old) indicates that 315 claims that should have reached a status of >125 days old never did - these must be the number of claims less than 125 days that got adjudicated; these are some of the prioritized claims that got processed in AUG2011. Now some real hypothesizing: IF you assume the average age of these 315 claims that got adjudicated is 100 days, the rest of the claims for AUG averaged 395 days... but my 490 day claim had not been touched, so I'll assume that all of the regular claims adjudicated were at least 490 540 days old then (and now I am at 540 days so I'll assume all of the regular claims completed in AUG were at least 540 days old. )

This means that they do not give enough numbers to postulate :lol: And I'd guestimate that about 85-95% of the claims processed at Indy are prioritized.

But it does indicate another symptom of a system at its breaking point where unless you are in a "prioritized" category, your estimated adjudication date is growing and continues to grow - to at least 540+days now. This conclusion assumes they work the claims in the order received...but I've read posts here and on other forums that indicate that their "party line" about this is a lie wishful thinking.

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Next VARO Indianapolis issue:

Submitted IRIS request on 27SEP2011 -> its supposed to have a 5 business day time for response. Nothing yet after 8 10 business days. The 1-800 operator says it was forwarded to the Indy VARO for them to reply. Just like my last IRIS inquiry that I had to call the 1-800 number and get the customer service rep to read to me from her computer. :blink:

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Received a reply to an IRIS inquiry regarding whether new C&P exams will be required due to current C&P exams being over one year old (due to slow VARO response to claims):

Dear Mr. Xxxxxxx

This is in response to your inquiry to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) dated September 27, 2011.

We apologize for the delay in responding to your inquiry. We are currently experiencing a large volume of inquiries and are working as quickly as possible to respond to each in a timely manner.

Mr. Xxxxxx, we thank you for your service to our country.

We received your claim for increase on April 14, 2010, for ............. Your claim is still in the Development Phase. Based on the information available, the required development actions have been completed. We will review your claim to ensure we have everything we need to make an informed decision. If we determine we need additional information, we will contact you.

There are two additional phases: the Decision Phase and the Notification Phase.

The VA doesn't have a policy to reorder exams if they are over a year old. Once a claim is awaiting a decision by our rating activity, a rating specialist will review the information to make sure we have everything we need to make a fair decision. If at that time, they feel a more current exam is necessary, one will be ordered.

Your continued patience is appreciated.

Thank you for contacting us. If you have questions or need additional help with the information in our reply, please respond to this message or see our other contact information below.

Sincerely yours,

Donovan W. Thompson

National IRIS Response Center Manager

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Just to give you a frame of reference for your stats, I applied to Indy RO on 04-14-2009 for PTSD, TBI, TDIU, residuals, hand fracture, tinnitus, and bilateral hearing loss and my claim was awarded on 8-5-2010. By my math that's 16 months. With regards to your dependency claim, I filed for dependency at the Manila RO in May of this year and it was awarded this past Monday, 10-17-2011- for 5 months total.

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