Right now, more than 500,000 veterinarians are involved in a backlog of VA claims. 100k of those Vets are awaiting a rating decision. The other 400,000 veterans are awaiting the VA appeal process. With a 2017 budget expected to be $184 billion, you’d think the VA could do just fine. If the DOD provides information about the entire claims process, from start to finish, through retirement and separation for military veterans, they will know how to navigate the claims process. If the VA has the information in every office across the country, veterinarians will be able to file claims quickly and make decisions faster. Something needs to be done and this story needs to be told for those nearly half a million Vets records stuck in the system. There is hope and for the last five years the VA has reduced the number of backlogged claims in the claims process. So it can be done. However, it would be nice to see the backlog of claims settle to zero.
In 2007 I retired after 20 years in the Air Force. I am a veteran of the Iraq war and a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal. When I got out of the military, my commander told me to make a copy of my military health records and take them to the VA. I did this and waited 8 months for a rating decision. I figured it wasn’t an abnormally long time since there were hundreds of thousands of vets in the system. In 2010, I had a severe attack of PTSD. I was hospitalized at the Baltimore VA Medical Center. Upon release, I was told to make copies of my health records and file a PTSD claim. So I did. A year passed and I started making phone calls but couldn’t get a response as to where the claim was in the process. Two years passed and now I was frustrated. Three years passed and I was angry. I reached out to a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and my story about the backlog of VA claims and my ordeal over a three-year period made national headlines. I spent a lot of time learning the process inside and out. I knew almost immediately that I had not followed the VA criteria for properly filing a VA claim. VA needs to process a Fully Developed Claim (FDC) in order for it to fly through the VA claims process. Historically, FDCs take shorter time frames to decide claims that do not submit all necessary information. I believe this information should be provided to veterinarians so they can fully understand the claims process and what they need to provide to the VA in order to file a fully developed (FDC) claim.