Senator has plan to improve vets claims process - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Senator has plan to improve vets claims process

The chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee has unveiled a two-part plan for improving the disability claims process.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, proposes some immediate changes that could lead to faster benefits payments, such as giving more weight to private medical opinions, reducing the one-year appeals period to 180 days, and awarding partial disability ratings on complicated claims of multiple disabilities so that at least some payments can be made quickly.

A longer-term solution — which also is part of the bill, S 3517, that Akaka introduced Tuesday — would create a pilot project at six to 10 locations where veterans’ disability ratings would be based on medical codes used in the private health insurance system rather than on VA’s ratings schedule.

Akaka said the change could make it easier to electronically transfer claims because codes of the International Statistical Classification of Disease and Related Health Problems, known as ICD codes, are universally understood and already widely transmitted within the federal government.

Akaka’s bill will be the subject of a July 1 hearing about a disability claims system that appears resistant to quick fixes and is sagging under the weight of almost 1 million new claims each year.

“VA has seen a dramatic rise in the number of claims, driven by a number of factors, including the aging of the general veteran population and our prolonged involvement in two overseas conflicts,” Akaka said.

“Complicating matters, many claims are increasing in complexity as veterans seek service connection for multiple disabilities and for disabilities that are difficult to diagnose, such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Neither Akaka nor his staff claimed that the proposed changes would solve all of the problems facing the VA system, but they described the plan as a starting point for discussion about taking tangible steps after years of merely talking about the need to do something.

“Everyone involved realizes that there is no quick fix to solving the myriad issues associated with disability claims processing,” Akaka said, pledging that his committee “intends to do everything within its power to improve this situation.”