Anyone Out There Desire To Change The Process?

[PayBack]

Hi,

I realize that you all must be laughing hysterically at this post. Thinking that this guy must be joking or extremely naive. Well, I'm not joking, just disgusted. As I browse the internet seeking assistance about veterans issues, I'm really appalled by the injustices that many of us face in our pursuit of benefits. I've decided that I'm going to dedicate a major portion of my time and limited resources to ensuring that this stops. There is NO reason that this process takes so long. Call it apathy or lethargy, take your pick. I call it an " American Tragedy". Our elected officials have the power to change this and with everbodies help, I think we can get them to change it. As long as THEY are creating more disabled veterans every day, they're accountable. We have so many compelling stories, and it's time we informed the world of this treatment. There is no logical reason that any claim can't be completed with 365 days (including appeals). I've been inside VA buildings, they must work smarter and perhaps harder (limiting breaks, internet browsing, chit chat etc...). If there goal were redefined for them and officials held accountable, perhaps we could affect positive outcome. Imposing real disciplinary action on neglectful officials would be a key component in affecting this change. Something as simple as three strikes and your gone. Do away with REMANDing? It wastes time. Simply overrule the previous findings. If a VA official has an original decision or a DRO has their rulings changed 3 times, they gotta go. This may make the actually read the evidence that's before them. We would simply want those involved in the process "Do the Right Thing". No more, No less. If you want to help let me know. I'm very serious. If I have to do it alone, I'll work it till I die. I heard the stories, but until it happened to me, it never hit home. I apologize to all for not taking up the fight sooner. I swear by all that is sacred to me that I will not rest until this issue is resolved. We have an election coming in 2008, if we organize and work smart, perhaps we could use this to our advantage and affect positive change by then. Media, print, internet, we'll need to pool the resources and get real EXPOSURE. I'm very serious, and I hope you are too.

GOD Bless

[Josephine]

Most never know who rates their claim much less that they have been cheated by a maverick rater.

Pete,

I think I may be the only one that knows who did the rating on their claim.

I believe she gave that hint away when she placed the telephone call to me. She told me she was a rating examiner.

It will be interesting to see, who went into the computer and changed my medical records from having a C&P Nov. 16, 2007 to an addendum free of that information.

I sure am happy, Dr. Crowley has both copies and he spotted it and said he would have to adddress this. To whom, I didn't ask.

Always,

Betty

Edited January 13, 2008 by Josephine

[betrayed]

Back to the original intent of the post, here it is put up or shut up

"Hello all:

THE CASE:

This litigation is still alive in the United States District Court. The court has spent the last ten months - through District Judge Lodge and Magistrate Judge Boyle attempting to throw this case out of court on a number of technicalities.

They have not yet been able to succeed in that effort.

THE DELAYS:

However, ten months court delay on entry of a case onto the dockett is beyond all acceptable standards of law under the US Constitution 14th Amendment Due Process and speedy justice civil rights and the civil right to Equality of Access to the Courts!

OFFICAL COMPLAINTS OF JUDICIAL DEPRIVATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS:

Judge Lodge is already under my official complaint to the US 9th Circuit Judicial Council (accepted to that dockett) for deprivations of civil rights in this and several other cases.

Now, for the ten months of illegal dilatory tactics US Magistrate Boyle will shortly have complaint of deprivation of civil rights against himself in the 9th circuit judicial council.

WHAT SHOULD YOU - AS A NOTICED PLAINTIFF - BE DOING:

1) You should be preparing and updating your chronological outline of what you experienced at the hands of the VA as the Veteran and how it caused you emotional distress or how what your Veteran experienced from the VA caused you - as an immediate family member - to worry and fear for your Veteran (emotional distress). This chronological outline will be the basis from which your individual brief of complaint will be prepared to submit to the court.

2) You should be talking with all the Veterans and their family members that you can meet. Telling them about this lawsuit, handing the interested ones printout copies of the joinder notice, and telling them how to get to the open membership Yahoo! Group vetsuesva to find the files that will give them more info.

NUMBER OF PLAINTIFFS:

Veterans and their immediate family members need to bring more people to this litigation.

With large numbers of plaintiffs joined to the litigation we all have much more clout in court.

We now have some 60 plaintiffs who have submitted notice to join this litigation. Feedback from the field indicates there may be ten more notices on their way shortly. If so, then we have comfortably passed the halfway mark to the first one hundred members.

Successfully passing that 100 member mark should accelerate the numbers of persons wishing to join thereafter.

But this is a grassroots effort with no major national backing - we grow only by word of mouth.

It takes your personal effort to get out there and tell those many pissed off Veterans that they can join us and help sue the VA!

It takes YOU, to show them that they can force the VA to be improved for themselves and for all future Veterans by joining this lawsuit.

All it takes is for you to open the conversation with "Hey, have you heard about the lawsuit against the VA for refusing to help Veterans?" and then just following thier lead. They will tell you if they want to know more - and then they will pump you for all you know!"

Heres the math. Assume 50 of us get out and talk to Veterans and family memebrs during this month. Assume that each of that 50 talks to only 10 people during the month! And that only 1 out of every 10 people we talk to joins us. That would bring 50 more plaintiffs into the lawsuit in January 2008 and put us to over one hundred plaintiffs in just one month.

Now, what if each of those fifty members only talked to 5 people and handed out 5 notice forms a month, but did that every single month of 2008? And what if still, only 1 out of ten joined us? How many new members - from just this effort - would we have by the end of December 2008? 300 !

And that could easily put us to over 400 members by the end of this year!

In all honesty if just 25 of you get out and talk to Veterans and their family members every week, and pass out just 10 notice forms to interested persons each month - every month - we would most likely have over five hundred members by the end of the year.

A FIVE HUNDRED member litigation talks BIG in court, very big! It also makes the national news media jump up and pay attention - we will get BIG news media time in print, on radio and on television! If we can get that news attention all across the nation, Veterans will win this litigation and Congress will force the VA to improve itself immediately!

Our five hundred member litigation can then draw the joinder of the Gulf War and Afghanistan War Veterans 350 member litigation to ours and combined we will then have 850 or more members all claiming the same types of violations by the VA!

Gee folks, if we cause that to happen, do you think that maybe the combined litigation would immediately jump to 1500 to 2000 Veterans and family members as plaintiffs in a matter of what, six months into 2009?

And, maybe, be settled with the VA and Congress before the end of 2009?

With the US Congressional mandated VA changes taking effect in 2010 !?

We Veterans, properly united in litigation, do have the power to force these VA improvements into effect by the end of 2010!

And we haven't even started talking about any awards of damages to the Veterans and family members!

Get out there and get us more members and we can force the changes to happen that quickly! And who knows, might be we could all afford to go to a celebration conference meeting at Disney World in 2010 paid out of our damages awards!

Wouldn't it be great to meet the many faces and the fellow Veterans who joined with us to make these changes happen? And to play at Disney World with those Veterans and their families? "

you want to make a change in the VA here is a way to do it. I am a member of this class action law suit you can find info on my website about it, I didnt start the suit but I agree with it and promote it.

[betrayed]

To help unite and keep us motivated, let's not forget that many VA employees enjoy annual cash bonuses while many veterans, with asinine rating decisions in hand, are forced to wait years in appeals to get rightfully-deserved compensation benefits. These VA employees buy homes and cars and support their family, while far too many disabled veterans lose theirs. It's a shame. Veterans deserve better.

Although it hasn't meant much so far, I will fight for veterans until I die. Thank you for your service!

(I've attached a document with further explanation of this End Product issue.)_2Steve_SmithsonEND_PRODUCT.doc

Morgan that attachment is very interesting and damaging to the VA if anyone gave a crap. Thats a excerpt, is the rest of the document as damaging as what I read? Where did you get that document and how do you know its authentic? I would like to put that up on my website, but because I will include the authors name I need to know its authentic to cover my rear. I am also going to forward the excerpt to the leader of the class action lawsuit I am in, read my post below.

Edited January 14, 2008 by BETRAYED

[john999]

The VA is sort of like the Soviet Union. It will fall under its own weight of mismanagement. Of course, most of the old guys I see at my VAMC just love it. They think they are getting the best until the doctor cuts off the wrong leg.

[allan]

Complete Document:

STATEMENT OF

STEVE SMITHSON, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR CLAIMS SERVICES

VETERANS AFFAIRS AND REHABILITATION DIVISION

THE AMERICAN LEGION

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISABILITY ASSISTANCE AND MEMORIAL AFFAIRS

COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ON

THE TRAINING PROVIDED TO VETERANS BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION

CLAIMS ADJUDICATORS AND THE STANDARDS USED TO MEASURE

THEIR PROFICENCY AND PERFORMANCE

SEPTEMBER 13, 2006

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for this opportunity to present The American Legion’s views on the training provided to Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) claims adjudicators and the standards used to measure their proficiency and performance. We commend the Subcommittee for holding this hearing to discuss these important issues.

Training

Proper mandatory training is a key factor in the quality of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) regional office rating decisions. The Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) combined remand and reversal rate (59.4 percent) of regional office decisions for Fiscal Year 2005 is a direct reflection of the lack of importance placed on training by the VA regional offices. Over the past few years, The American Legion’s Quality Review Team has visited almost 40 VA regional offices for the purpose of assessing overall operation. The American Legion reviews recently adjudicated claims and interviews service center staff. Our site visits reveal that, at many regional offices, there have been too few experienced supervisors that could provide trainee adjudicators proper mentoring and quality assurance. In addition, at many stations, ongoing training for the new hires as well as the more experienced staff would be postponed or suspended, so as to focus maximum effort on production.

Although the Under Secretary for Benefits has stated on numerous occasions that training of personnel is a top priority within VBA, the inconsistency in VBA’s training approach and in its implementation needs to be thoroughly reviewed and addressed by upper management within the Department. In the experience of The American Legion, the lack of proper training and oversight adversely impacts all areas of VBA. Please note that each of VBA’s 57 regional offices appear to have different approaches to training and also differ in the importance placed on training. According to a May 2005 report from the VA Office of the Inspector General (VAOIG) based on a survey of rating veteran service representatives (RVSRs) and decision review offices (DROs), the respondents expressed positive opinions regarding the quality of their training but indicated that training has not received high priority.

57 percent reported the quality of training to be good or very good

16 percent reported the quality of training to be poor or very poor

45 percent reported that they had received 10 hours or less of formal classroom instruction on rating policies and procedures in the last 12 months.

24.1 percent reported that they had received 11-20 hours of formal classroom instruction in the last 12 months.

18.0 percent responded that their regional office provides formal classroom instruction on rating policies and procedures once a week.

45.6 percent responded that their regional office provides formal classroom instruction on rating policies and procedures once a month.

36.4 percent responded that their regional office provides formal classroom instruction on rating policies and procedures once a quarter or less often.

The information obtained in the VAOIG’s survey is consistent with what The American Legion has found in talking to service center staff during our quality review site visits. Some stations have regular formalized or structured training programs, while others have training programs that are best described as more informal and sporadic. Some stations have well established and structured training for new employees, but ongoing training for experienced staff is very limited.

We are appreciative of the importance the Under Secretary for Benefits has placed on training of VBA personnel. We are also aware of the centralized training program that has been implemented; however, a national training standard/requirement, in addition to the centralized training conducted by Compensation and Pension Service (C&P), for regional office personnel is also needed. Consistent and standardized training at each regional office must take place for all personnel—experienced and new hires alike. The American Legion believes it is crucial that such a program be implemented and closely monitored for compliance by the Under Secretary for Benefits. Management in stations not in compliance with such training requirements must be held accountable; otherwise any national or centralized training effort will not be successful.

Additionally, The American Legion believes it is essential to proper training that information (reasons for remand or reversal) from BVA decisions, DRO decisions and errors noted in National STAR and other internal quality reviews be tracked and examined for patterns. This information should then be used in mandatory formal training to ensure that common errors and other discrepancies occurring in regional office rating decisions are not repeated. This information should also be used for remedial training purposes when patterns of errors are identified for specific individuals. Although such data is currently being collected and disseminated to the regional offices, it appears that consistent utilization of this data in regular formalized and specific training has been lacking. Unless regional offices (both managers and individual adjudicators) learn from their mistakes and take corrective action, there will continue to be a high rate of improperly adjudicated claims, resulting in a consistently high appeals rate and subsequent high BVA remand/reversal rate of regional office decisions.

Performance Standards

The emphasis on production continues to be a driving force in the VA regional office, often taking priority over such things as training and quality assurance. Performance standards of adjudicators and rating specialists are centered on productivity as measured by work credits, known as “End Products”. Both veteran service representatives (VSRs) and rating veteran service representatives (RVSRs) have minimum national productivity requirements that must be met each day. Some stations also set their own standards, based on their claims backlog and other station specific requirements that is over and above the national requirement. Unfortunately, the end product work measurement system essentially pits the interests of the claimant against the needs of VA managers. The conflict is created because the regional offices have a vested interest in adjudicating as many claims as possible in the shortest amount of time. This creates a built-in incentive to take shortcuts so that the End Product can be taken. The system, in effect, rewards regional offices for the gross amount of work they report, not whether the work is done accurately or correctly, often resulting in many claims being prematurely adjudicated. These problems are caused by inadequate development, failure to routinely identify all relevant issues and claims and ratings based on inadequate examinations. Such errors are often overshadowed by the desire of VA managers to claim quick End Product credit. The result has been a traditionally high remand rate by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC). The BVA’s combined remand and reversal rate (59.4 percent) for Fiscal Year 2005 is arguably a direct reflection of the greater emphasis placed on production over training and quality assurance.

It seems to The American Legion that VBA management has been reluctant to establish a rigorous quality assurance program to avoid exposing the longstanding history of the manipulation of workload data and policies that contribute to poor quality decision-making and the high volume of appeals. VBA’s quality-related problems and the fact that little or no action is being taken to prevent or discourage the taking of premature End Products have been longstanding issues for The American Legion. The current work measurement system, and corresponding performance standards, are used to promote bureaucratic interests of regional office management and VBA rather than protecting and advancing the rights of veterans. The end product work measurement system, as managed by the VA, does not encourage regional office managers to ensure that adjudicators do the “right thing” for veterans the first time. For example, denying a claim three or four times in the course of a year before granting the benefit sought allows for a total of 5 end product work credits to be counted for this one case, rather than promptly granting the benefit and taking only one work credit. In the view of The American Legion, the need for a substantial change in VBA’s work measurement system is long overdue. A more accurate reliable work measurement system would help to ensure better service to veterans. Ultimately, this would require the establishment of a work measurement system that does not allow work credit to be taken until the decision in the claim becomes final, meaning that no further action is permitted by statute whether because the claimant has failed to initiate a timely appeal or because the BVA rendered a final decision.

Proficiency/Competency

C&P conducted an open book (pilot) job skill certification test for VSRs several years ago in which the pass rate was extremely low (approximately 23 percent). Even more alarming than the low-test scores was the fact that those who took the test had several years of experience in the position and were considered to be proficient.

C&P subsequently finalized its VSR proficiency test and conducted tests in May and August of this year. Employees participating in the testing underwent 20 hours of training prior to taking the test and the success rate (approximately 42 percent) for the May test was much higher than the pilot test. The results for the August test have not been released yet. C&P plans on conducting two VSR tests each year, one in winter and the other in the summer.

The American Legion applauds the new testing program as a step in the right direction but we still have concerns. Although successful completion of the test will be required for promotion or assignment to a rating board, it is not mandatory as a condition of employment in that position. C&P is in the process of developing a test for RVSRs and DROs but a timeline for completion or implementation has not yet been determined. Unfortunately, like the VSR test, the test for RVSRs and DROs will not be mandatory as a condition of employment.

The goal of competency testing is to ensure that an individual in any given position is competent, proficient, and otherwise qualified to perform the duties required of that position. This testing goal will not be achieved if testing is not mandatory or is not provided for all levels or for all positions.

Closing

The American Legion realizes that VBA faces many difficult challenges during the upcoming fiscal year. Although we have offered our suggestions and comments, we realize that there is no easy solution and we will continue to work closely with VA to ensure our nation’s veterans receive the benefits to which they are entitled. That concludes my testimony. I will be happy to answer any questions.

SOURCE: http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/schedul...veSmithson.html

Edited January 15, 2008 by allan