VA, Defense take aim at claims backlog with Web-based portal

The Veterans Affairs Department and the Defense Department have launched an enhanced, Web-based computer portal to try and address its notorious and persistent benefits claim backlog affecting hundreds of thousands of veterans.

The portal, eBenefits, which “integrates with the new internal Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS) electronic claims processing system, marks a major milestone in VA's transformation from paper claims records to a fully digital operating environment,” the VA said in a news release.

As a user interface, “eBenefits isn't new,” said VA spokesman Randy Noller, but its seamless integration with the VA's back-end system, VBMS, is. The VA has recently completed implementing VBMS at all 56 of its regional offices, he said.

The portal features a “step-by-step, interview-style application, with pre-populated data fields and drop-down menus similar to popular tax preparation software.”

The VA is counting on automation to serve as “one of the keys to VA's goal to eliminate the disability claims backlog by the end of 2015.”

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has made chopping through the benefits backlog—caused by a flood of homecoming veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—a top priority.

So has TV comedian Jon Stewart, who has devoted several segments of his “Daily Show” mock news program to highlighting the problem.

In a separate announcement today, the VA said that more than 65,000 claims—or 97% of all claims over 2 years old—“have been eliminated from the backlog.”

Jim Atkinson, the director of the Porter County Veterans Service Office in Valparaiso, Ind., is hopeful, but skeptical the latest technological innovation will have much of an impact.

One of Atkinson's jobs is to help veterans with their applications for medical disabilities, shepherding them through the Defense Department and VA bureaucracies. The VA has had the Veterans Online Application website, or VONAPP, for several years, but he doesn't trust it because the VA is “in the habit of losing things.”

“I've never used it. We do everything with paperwork. We have copies of everything,” Atkinson said. “You gotta have proof,” he said. “There can be a lot of money involved. It could be $50,000 in backpay if it takes two years to process a claim.”

The benefits backlog, Atkinson added, is only the tip of the iceberg for what's in store for the nation in dealing with two of its longest wars, in which troops were called on to go on three and four combat deployments.

Shinseki has been under intense pressure to address the benefits backlog, with at least one member of Congress calling for his resignation.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn