Streamlining Claims Process

[BMCS00]

It's easy enough to complain about how long it takes to get what seems to be a simple claim through the process in a timely fashion. We all know complaining does little good unless the right person hears it.

Some of you have worked as a VSR or for the VA in some other capacity in your past, most of us sit around and wait for our claims to be finished to our satisfaction.

How about post here some ways to improve the process. I think it takes too long between Comp & Pen exam to rating decision, but I don't know or understand the process in between. I think a timeline should be established for a new claim, from the day it arrives at the VBA to the day a rating decision is made. How long should it take for each step of the process? How many steps to the process are there? Are we really just searching for the holy grail in the world of disability claims processing?

I would like to foster some discussion here, and see what we can come up with ... what do you say?

Jim

Life is good! B)

[SLEDGE]

I've never seen a VCAA letter.

I used a highlighter and sticky-notes to show the RO where the mistakes were made.

Then they screwed-up and included their internal memos in with the records that I had requested.

From one RO employee to the next they had written, deny this Vets claim, he only knows how to mark up the SSOC with a highlighter and who told this guy to use notes?

That was only one of several different internal denial statements that I was obviously not supposed to see.

Their internal notes were instrumental in helping me to land a pro-bono lawyer in 2000.

Their internal memos also gave me the attitude which paved the way to fighting the jerks until the day that I die or they do.

Except for a few notable exceptions, the people who process our claims think of us as something that got stuck on their shoe while walking through a cow pasture.

We are fraudulent bums and drug seekers until proven differently.

They do not see us as the reason that they have a job.

They see us as the reason that the advancement in their occupation gets put on hold.

They love it when a disabled vet stops fighting for his rights and earned benefits.

That's the same as settling a claim and reducing the backlog without using any of the governments resources, in their sociopathic little minds.

IMO,

The government's resources are being severely wasted by VA employees who pad the payroll by requiring more and more VA employees to handle/work our mishandled and continuing claims.

I would love to see somebody/anybody prove me wrong.

Just my opinion based upon facts.

sledge

[vmo]

When we request a copy of our C-file, who goes thru and removes all the internal memo's? What happens to them? I have often wondered about this. I've heard they are doing away with paper memo's. Now I wonder if they post the memo's in their computer? You bet they have some type side bar to reference your file. (That is not part of your C-file but referenced to it when it is worked!). I would love to see what is stuck to my file. Probably the same stuff as is on the bottom of their shoe's. *In the earlier days of my second appeal, I had a not too friendly conversation with a VA gent on the toll free line. I kept my cool until he ran out of answers and tried to bullsh-t me. Then he got nasty, I fired it right back. My appeal that was originally in Cleveland VARO--for some reason----ended up in VARO Huntington, West (by God) Virginia. Amazing, with another Vet's name and C-file number all mixed with in my appeals file. So now we had two veteran's appeals really screwed up. I won my appeal after some 7-years. The problem is they (VA) are the screwer's and we are the screweeeeees!! You are right John999, we win a claim by evidence, but believe me it is more than the benefit of the doubt.

[hedgey]

I used a highlighter and sticky-notes to show the RO where the mistakes were made.

Then they screwed-up and included their internal memos in with the records that I had requested.

From one RO employee to the next they had written, deny this Vets claim, he only knows how to mark up the SSOC with a highlighter and who told this guy to use notes?

Sledge, thank you for posting this. I'm having a darker day, and wasn't feeling up to making the calls I need to make, or writing up the statement I'm supposed to be doing. Your post has lit a fire in my heart and I'm grabbing the phone right now.

Thanks for the inspiration, just when I needed some!

[john999]

you don't want to win by benefit of doubt. You want there to be no doubt. You just want to surround and crush them with evidence. We do a pincher movement and cut off and surround the VARO and then move in the big evidence guns and blast away. Arguments often fail. Overkill is good.

[SLEDGE]

"When we request a copy of our C-file, who goes thru and removes all the internal memo's? What happens to them?"

In my case, I did not even suspect that the RO jerks were capable of such biased and illegal activities.

Obviously, the person who should have cleaned up my file, before the process of copying, was gone that day.

I do not have a clue as to where that stuff goes when they pull it out.

They told one another to deny my claims because I had not shown up for my hearing.

Later they discovered that the hearing was NEVER SCHEDULED and was NEVER RESCHEDULED.

They also privately said to deny my claims because I had not shown up for a C&P. They later discovered that the exam had been canceled by the examining facility, in a letter to me, and NEVER RESCHEDULED.

They also said to deny my claims because I had missed my requested C&P.

Later they discovered that I had shown up but the examiner had been told to examine me on another date.

And the exam was NEVER RESCHEDULED.

I forgot to throw away the written notices, those one page notices, that the jerks had sent to me and I'm sure my lawyer chuckled about it for 3 days.

Their latest trick was to write up 2 more C&P exams that I never knew about and could not have attended. The evidence from these 2 exams is not as negative as it could have been but, once again, my lawyer will get a good laugh outa their BS.

In their latest stuff they are acknowledging some evidence from the late 80's and early 90's, medical evidence that they have never implied using before now.

Stuff that I sent in to support my contentions in place of their C&P's that NEVER HAPPENED.

They've had some of that evidence for 21 years and would have had to admit that it was received in order to rebut it.

Well, I've been saying for years that the claims process was just fine as long as the VA jerks would actually follow their own rules.

They don't need to reinvent the process because they have yet to experience the adjudication process as it was originally mandated by congress.

I believe we should see how it works 'without the bonus system' before trying to fix it.

If a bonus system has to exist I believe that the bonuses should be determined by the clients of the system, not the administrators of the system.

But everybody knows how crazy sledge is.

sledge