How/when to get your claim expidited. (hurried up)

[broncovet]

Other than opting in to RAMP, here are some things you can do to get your claim expidited.

https://www.hillandponton.com/expediting-claim-need-to-know/

Among other things, if you are homeless, terminally ill, or a former POW, you should be able to get your claim advanced.  

Edited October 8, 2018 by broncovet

[GeekySquid]

23 hours ago, broncovet said:

things you can do to get your claim expidited.

Sadly the functional definition of expedited is wildly inconsistent and illogical in the VA system

Each claim is different obviously, but one would think that a homeless vet, someone being physically abused, dying or being evicted should have their own "private" lane to process claims.

As I understand this, the claim is marked as a Flash and that puts it on top of a pile, but whose pile and and how big that pile is remain something of a mystery. In the VA system there is in place a mechanism that "farms out" claims to different RO's based on workload. That system seems to be opaque to general internet searches so its parameters are unclear.

It seems kind of sad if you consider the current Monday Morning Report numbers

for example this week there is a reported total of 365,851 Compensation and Pension Rating Bundle Files of which 137,012 are for Original Entitlements and 38,552 are Pending > 125 days.

It begs the question of how many "raters" does the VA employ?

Say the VA employs 1000 rates across the entire system, a number that seems low but who knows?

If correct each rater would have 1370 claims on their plates this week. If we assume 100% efficiency, and we know that is a crock, and a 5 day work week,  8 work hours a day. Each rater would "Review" 274 new claims bundles every day. That is 34.25 claims files per hour. We know that is not happening.

What seems more reasonable is that raters are "expected" to spend 1 hour reviewing every initial claims bundle as a average. That would be 8 claims a day per rater. At that rate the VA would need between 3 and 4 thousand raters working full time to process just the weekly backlog of initial claims, and would still not be able to work the files waiting for stuff outside the VA's control.

It is just sad and bewildering that VA and Congress allowed this to happen over the years and even trying to dig out of it with "new" systems the VA still reports numbers in a way that is deceptive.