Internal investigators at the Department of Veterans Affairs have told Congress that some VA workers were “cooking the books” on benefit claims by veterans to make it look like the work was being done in a more timely fashion, much like earlier charges that VA schedulers were changing dates to mask long delays in veterans getting health care appointments.
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“They manipulated the numbers,” Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) told me, “which is exactly what has happened with the backlog of health care requests.”
Miller said Monday night’s hearing before the House Veterans Committee will show how the VA set a goal to work through a giant backlog of benefit claims but took shortcuts and used smoke and mirrors to get there.
“You will see where they have set a goal, but they have manipulated the numbers in order to meet that goal,” Miller said, as the office of Inspector General of the VA will relay a host of charges about work of the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA).
“VBA continues to face challenges to ensure veterans receive timely and accurately benefits and services,” reads the prepared testimony of Linda Halliday, who says the average time it takes to deal with a veterans benefits claim is 249 days as of June 2013.
In a review of work at the VA regional benefits office in Philadelphia just last month, investigators found “significant opportunities” for VA workers to “manipulate and input incorrect dates of claims in the electronic record.”
In other words – it wasn’t too hard to change the dates and make it look like the VA was acting quickly on veterans benefits claims.
For example, the IG found that when claims workers were trying to deal with outstanding claims, they used the date they discovered the delayed application for benefits, not the original date the claim was made.
The review found that workers were using an electronic date stamp to record when veterans benefits claims were received – but “each claims assistant maintained a key that allowed access to the mechanism inside where they could adjust the electronic date.”
In one instance, the “electronic date stamp incorrectly stamped documents with a future date,” Halliday reported.
More than just date manipulation on veterans benefits
In spot checks in several VA benefit offices, investigators found more than just issues about date manipulation, saying there is evidence that sometimes veterans claims aren’t acted on at all.
In Philadelphia, officials “found mail bins full of claims and associated evidence that had not been scanned into Virtual VA since 2011,” Halliday will tell lawmakers.
Other possible troubles included VBA staffers “inappropriately shredding or destroying” mail, staffers hiding incoming mail, workers not dealing with over 32,000 electronic inquiries from vets about the status of their claims and evidence of improper payments.
“Managers are aware that veterans are receiving duplicate payments and directing staff to administratively write-off overpayments associated with the duplicate payments,” the testimony says.
Monday night’s hearing will also feature testimony from whistleblowers at the VA; a committee spokesman said these VA workers tried to speak up about issues with veterans benefits claims, but suffered reprisals from within the system like other VA workers the panel has heard from.
“These are challenging times for VA,” says Halliday of the VA’s IG office.
And for lawmakers, it’s another chance to lean on the VA for straight answers in a hearing after the dinner hour.