Summary: The Department of Veterans Affairs pays monthly compensation benefits to veterans with injuries or diseases incurred or aggravated while on active military duty and monthly pension benefits to wartime veterans who have low incomes and are permanently and totally disabled for reasons not connected to their service. The Veterans Benefit Administration's (VBA) new accuracy measurement system, deployed at the beginning of fiscal year 1999, indicates that it needs to give more attention to ensuring that the regional offices that process compensation and pension claims make correct decisions the first time so that veterans need not make unnecessary appeals or be unnecessarily delayed in receiving benefits. Compared with VBA's previous system, the new one focuses more on regional office decisions that are likely to contain processing errors, uses a stricter method for computing accuracy rates, provides more data on the performance of VBA's organizational levels, collects more data on processing errors, and stores more accurate review results in a centralized database for review and analysis. However, VBA could (1) further strengthen its ability to identify error-prone cases by collecting more detailed data on the human body systems, specific impairments, and deficiencies in medical evidence and examinations involved in disability claims, (2) implement a system for reviewing claims-processing accuracy that meets standards on separation of duties and organizational independence, and (3) keep Congress informed on its progress in establishing stricter employee accountability and developing more effective training for claims adjusters.
