Tens of thousands of unopened claims letters hidden at VA offices

Unopened claims letters hidden at VA offices

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Mar 4, 2009 16:56:42 EST


A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money.

VA officials acknowledge further credibility problems based on a new report of a previously undisclosed 2007 incident in which workers at a Detroit regional office turned in 16,000 pieces of unprocessed mail and 717 documents turned up in New York in December during amnesty periods in which workers were promised no one would be penalized.

“Veterans have lost trust in VA,” Michael Walcoff, VA’s under secretary for benefits, said at a hearing Tuesday. “That loss of trust is understandable, and winning back that trust will not be easy.”

Unprocessed and unopened mail was just one problem in VA claims processing mentioned by Belinda Finn, VA’s assistant inspector general for auditing, in testimony before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

Auditors also found that the dates recorded for receiving claims, which in many cases determine the effective date for benefits payments, are wrong in many cases because of intentional and unintentional errors, Finn said.

more...

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/03/military_veteransaffairs_unopenedmail_030309w/

The money to pay claims does not come from the VA workers' pockets, so what was their incentive to do this?

understaffed, can't keep up, and if they report how far they are behind they will get bad reviews.

I worked in a hospital where the low-level Medical Records staff had one locked drawer where they stashed the medical charts that had been screwed up in various ways by medical records personnel.

Rather than risk the wrath of the Director of Medical Records (a shrieking termagant on a good day) the workers "disappeared" the sub-standard charts into the locked drawer.

The Medical Records Director had been told the key was lost and the drawer couldn't be opened. Saved the clerks listening to a lot of screaming, that drawer did.

As for those patients whose charts could not be found when/if they were re-admitted.....I often wondered how badly their care suffered.

The 'people' who like to say it are absolutely against it in practice.

Always.