VA’s New Online Claims System Aims to Break Disability Claims Backlog, Agent Orange Presumptives Get First System Use

– New Online Medical Claims System Launches This Year, Agent Orange Presumptives Get First System Use –

From the VA:

VA plans to develop a fully automated, online system for handling Veterans’ disability compensation claims by the end of this year.

More than a simple digitization of existing paper-based claims, the new system is part of VA’s modernization of the end-to-end processing workflow. Automation will substantially reduce processing time and increase accuracy while simplifying the way that Veterans interact with the claims process.

Initial use of the new system will focus on Vietnam Veterans exposed to Agent Orange who today have B-cell leukemia (hairy-cell leukemia), Parkinson’s disease, or ischemic heart disease. These diseases were recently granted presumptive service connection.

The final regulation covering claims for these diseases will become effective later this year, and while the first use of the new system will be limited to this subset of disabilities, usage will expand over time to include claims for other conditions.

The new system will guide Veterans through automated, program-assisted menus to capture the information and medical evidence that will drive faster claims decisions. Initially, VA estimates the new system may assist as many as 100,000 Veterans.

This is a significant step in integrating new technologies into claims processing and moving towards VA’s goal to “break the back of the claims backlog” and provide all Veterans with high quality decisions on their claims in no more than 125 days.