Summary: Under the direction of the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), 58 regional offices of the Department of Veterans Affairs receive and process veterans' compensation and pension disability claims. Responding to a GAO survey, 55 regional offices reported 238 practices that they believe have improved the accuracy of their disability decisions and remand rates. GAO grouped these into four areas: (1) efforts to improve staff training, guidance, or accountability; (2) changes in the supervisory or staffing structure; (3) efforts to develop evidence accurately and fully; and (4) efforts to communicate more effectively with veterans. VBA has taken some steps to identify potentially promising practices but has neither followed up on this effort nor developed a system for evaluating such practices and disseminating the results to regional offices. Regional offices reported various practices that they believe have helped improve their claims-processing performance, but regional office and VBA officials agreed that it would be helpful if VBA evaluated and identified best practices so that regional offices could use their limited resources to try only the most promising ones. VBA is in the initial stages of planning a system for evaluating promising practices but has not established specific time periods for developing and implementing it.
