VA hits major milestone in the resolution of legacy appeals

[Buck52]

VA hits major milestone in the resolution of legacy appeals

07/06/2020 11:01 AM EDT

 

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced today it has reached a significant milestone in the overall Legacy Appeals Resolution Plan with the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) completing actions on nearly all non-remand legacy appeals as of July 4.

[pacmanx1]

VA hits major milestone in the resolution of legacy appeals

 WASHINGTON –The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced today it has reached a significant milestone in the overall Legacy Appeals Resolution Plan with the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) completing actions on nearly all non-remand legacy appeals as of July 4.  

The non-remand inventory includes Notices of Disagreement (NODs) and substantive appeals filed with VBA in the legacy system before passage of the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 (AMA).

“Prior to implementing the AMA, the overall VA-wide legacy appeals inventory was more than 400,000,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “From February 2019 to the present — VBA, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and Veterans Health Administration have worked collectively to reduce the numbers to less than 200,000 — a more than 50% reduction.”

In conjunction with hitting this milestone, VBA’s Appeals Management Office will be known as the Office of Administrative Review (OAR). Under the new name, OAR will work to reduce VBA’s legacy remand inventory, administer VBA’s higher-level review program and oversee VBA’s Decision Review Operations Centers, which processes AMA higher-level reviews, higher-level review returns, and Board remands and grants.

 

So Basically, since my recently granted 2019 BVA appeal that goes back to 1998 falls under the legacy remand which means it has been well over a year, that also means I still have to wait for some unknown time period to get my retro decision.  I noticed that the key milestone refers to non-remanded appeals inventory and not remanded appeals.

 

 

[Buck52]

Roger that pacmanx1

[deedub75]

I wonder how many of those appeals reductions were veterans opting into the RAMP program as I did. My legacy appeal was remanded for more development so I ended up opting into RAMP. 

[pacmanx1]

Deedud75, the real sad story is in my case, BVA granted my claim and the VARO low balled my rating so I filed a NOD and then the VARO increased my rating but screwed up my effective date. I had to file a new NOD to BVA to get my corrected effective date.

[deedub75]

Similar story with mine. It was ultimately approved through a supplemental claim but they made the effective date the day they received my supplemental claim when I kept the claims going since 2010. I have an HLR now to hopefully correct the date.