The Absurd Wait for Veterans Filing Claims [Blog]

As of today there are nearly 900,000 Veterans waiting for Disability Claims to be processed with an average wait of more than 270 days.  The number of Veterans waiting more than a year has grown from 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 in December of 2012, a 2,000 percent increase. McDonald's serves over 900,000 people every hour.

What's the problem here?

All branches of the U.S. military use an Electronic Health Record system called AHLTA and the Veterans Administration actually uses a different Electronic Health Record system called VistA and as you might assume, the two systems do not communicate with each other. 

As recently as February of this year, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department have decided to scrap a program to create a single shared electronic health records system. After five years and more than $1 billion spent the two departments decided to merge the two existing systems.

How is it possible that these things are happening? In the beginning of 2012, the Department of Veterans Affairs stated they would cut the wait time in half by the end of the year. However, instead of things getting better, they actually got worse with even longer wait times to file claims. The biggest problem seems to be that the Veterans Administration is still using actual paper forms in the digital age. 

It's hard to understand when Social Security, Medicare and even the DMV have online forms why the Veterans Affairs can't fix this horrendous problem. Going electronic is nothing new. Civilian healthcare facilities have been changing over to electronic records for ten years now. 

And what's most disturbing is the government actually spent $1 billion and couldn't get it fixed.  How is that even possible?  If I awarded $1 billion to any of the leading developers of Electronic Health Records I could have had an integrated program to work with both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veteran Affairs in less than a year. They spent $1 billion in five years and didn't accomplish anything. Where are our leaders and why isn't someone overseeing this type of absurd wasteful spending? 

And there are two painful parts to this story. Not only the waste in money, but how about our Veterans? Don't our Veterans deserve better treatment? Why is it always once they have done their service, they are quickly forgotten or when they need our help, such as getting a disability claim filed, they are no longer a priority? Our Veterans respond on a moment’s notice to defend this country. 

When asked to serve repeated tours, they don't tell us it will be 275 days before they can do anything. Those who have come back missing limbs and other serious injuries have paid a price that many of us can't even begin to understand yet we repay them by forcing them to continue to suffer by not processing their claims in a timely manner. It's an absolute slap in the face to every service member that the government spent $1 billion over 5 years and couldn't fix this problem. 

I served 20 years in the U.S. Navy and we need someone who will fight for our Veterans.  I am running for the 50th Congressional District in 2014 and I hope you will support me in this fight to fix this broken system for our veterans and to do it now! Please contact me if you want to help or get involved.