Flow Chart For Claims Process

[midnight340]

Sometimes it helps to get a visual overview.

In my research I came across this "flow chart" that shows the claims process:

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11870&page=119

[john999]

The flow chart is what is supposed to happen to claims. Is there a option for "let claim sit on desk for six months gathering dust"? I don't think there is a clear timeline for claims. The VA works them when they get around to it. I filed a CUE claim at the VARO six years ago. It has been to the BVA and then to the Court and back to the BVA on remand. I had two DRO hearings on it at the VARO. Is a claim supposed to take 6 years and counting with no end in sight. No matter what the BVA says I will appeal right back to the Court unless I win everything. I will be lucky if this does not take ten years.

[midnight340]

Yeah, there are certainly no time guidelines there!! From what sometimes happens I'm thinking there should be a notation showing a "Black Hole" in several of the boxes on the chart. This chart comes from a paperback I found online:

PTSD Compensation and Military Service (2007)

Sorry your CUE claim is taking so long. Good luck from here on.

[john999]

By BVA remand was just denied on my CUE, so it is back to the Veterans Court I guess. VA claims are a black hole. My CUE was knocked back a year because of a clerical error on BVA's part. They used the wrong disability schedule when they denied my CUE. This is because schedule for disability ratings changed from 1972 to 1973 when my original claim was granted. Nobody knew this until my case got all the way to the Court. The CUE was made in 1973 at the VARO when my claim was granted. I started at the VARO level with this CUE and I have been to the BVA twice and court once. It is really all about money since I am claiming 100% since 1971 to 2001. I was rated 10% in 1973 retro to December 1971 when I was discharged. You see why they don't want to pay this thing or admit error. I should be the poster boy for horrible original decisions. I never got appeal rights nor any sort of pension exam. Plus 6 months of psychiatric records from my last duty station disappeared from the record. The VA excluded all positive evidence from the decision record and relied on testimony from an unidentified worker on the psychiatric ward to grant 10% based on alleged statement that I seemed " OK."

John

[retiredat44]

I posted a the link to a health flow chart ( a year or 2 ago) for healthcare under new passed, and was told never to do it again, and was told it was political.. it only had the name of the law which was named after the politician... it was a wild health care chart that took a very long time to follow the maze..

Edited January 15, 2012 by retiredat44

[Notorious Kelly]

Great post, midnight!

Ret44 - this whole process is political so it can be difficult to tell where the lines are (til ya cross one )

[deanbrt]

You have to dig through a number of pages but there is a flow chart here that is very detailed.

http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/h100146t.pdf