Asked to be chairman of the subcommittee, and im grateful to chairman row for the opportunity. I want to explain that although i look forward to working with ms. Elizabeth esty from connecticut as our new Ranking Member, under Committee Rules ms. Julia brownley is still the subcommittees acting Ranking Member. My understanding is that the full committee will schedule a business meeting to familiarize the subcommittee, im sorry, formalized the subcommittee assignment at our new subcommittee Ranking Members soon. Since we have not got that, i need to see if we have also come and would also want to make sure that we know that we have been joined by the Ranking Member, mr. Tim walsh, and we thank him for being here. I want to ask anonymous consent for the Ranking Member walsh for representative esty and salon be allowed to set at the dais and escalation. I also want to ask unanimous consent that ms. Esty be prepared or permitted to serve as Ranking Member for this hearing, pending her ratification for the full committee. Hearing no objections, so ordered. By way of a short introduction, this is my second term in congress, and on the subcommittee. I am a father of three and a grandfather of 11. And before coming to congress i worked in Small Business come in a trucking business, and my wife and i own a beauty salon. I was a firefighter and a state representative for over 20 years in illinois. Im also honored to say that i am, that my family has a tradition of service. I am not only marine, im a marine and a father and a marine. I am enlisted and hes an officer, so it makes for a unique conversation about our home. The House Veterans Affairs committee is known for working in a bipartisan manner to ensure that the department of Veterans Affairs provides are former military members with the best service possible. Our nations heroes deserve no less. This subcommittee specific addresses how to best provide for the needs of veterans who have medical conditions relating to their services. We also Work Together to ensure that veterans who have passed away are treated with dignity and respect. I look for to continuing this tradition and was working with ms. Esty and the members of the subcommittee on issues that are critically important to the veterans and our nation as a whole. That said, the first meeting oversight hearing of the 115 congress will focus on our National Work you, or the in w q. Has impacted the departments ability to process disability claims. Before the nwq the process was to process a claim at the Regional Office and the state with the veteran lived. The challenge was that some Regional Offices have large backlogs and other veterans and veterans in those states were often left in limbo. Even if the Regional Offices and other states would have been able to process the claims have to because of not being so busy. The nwq is supposed to increase effectiveness, efficiency by automatically assigning the claim to the Regional Office with the most capacity. On its face this is a common sense idea, the nwq allows the deed to distribute its workload evenly across the nation to reduce waiting times for veterans who file claims for benefits. However, the are some concerns about whether the nwq is actually performing as it should. Unfortunately the va claims backlogs have increased from about 76,000, backlogs claims on may 2 in 2016 before the nwq was fully implemented, to now almost, as a federal fourth, 101,000. 101,000. One has to question is whether the disbursement, the distribution works throughout the nwq is, in fact, more effective. Rather than assigning a claim to specific employee to work the entire claim, the nwq breaks up the claim into individual task such as scheduling a disability exam after one claim process to reduce the file and completes an action. The nwq will likely assign another claim processor for the next step. Second claim process of that also has to become familiar with the file to determine whether additional action is needed for the va to make a decision. It does not make sense to me on having multiple claim processors completely redo the same file can possibly save time. We will hear from our second panel as well, and it is comprised of the Veterans Service organizations, the ds owes used to receive an advance copies come used to receive an advance copy of the rating decisions before it was sent to the veteran. This practice gave the dso warty eight hours to review a proposed decision and raise objections before the decision was finalized. But now the nwq has been deployed. Via so complained they no longer have a chance to review the decision and try and resolve errors before any incorrect decision is sent to the veteran. I hope the va will explain what steps its taking to work with the vsos to ensure the va decision are accurate. Im also looking forward to learning more about how the va intends to monitor employees protection and quality standards now that the nwq has been implemented. I also the va will tell us more about the department, what department is to do to tackle the current backlog of appeals and nonreading claims, and how it plans to leverage nwq to do so. Again, i want to thank the witnesses for being here today, and without a want to call on Ranking Member ms. Esty, for her opening statement. Thank you very much, mr. Cha. And i appreciate your warm welcome, and im delighted to be joining the committee. Im happy to be a today as the Ranking Member designate at the subcommittee, and im looking forward to working with all of you to ensure that the veterans that we are honored to represent are receiving all the quality of care and the Rapid Service that they and the families deserve. A bit about my background. Im in my third term in congress. I am the daughter of a navy man, granddaughter of an, daughterinlaw of an air force and have a niece and nephew who are army. So weve got to get, we need marine peer where work at getting a marine in the next generation. My district, Fifth District of connecticut is proud on to over 40,000 veterans, and long service tradition. In my office it is always issue number one, two or three for constituent services. Weve made it a core part of her mission or i hire veterans and tyler in my im committed to ensuring that i do when you country is served in turn all of us who enjoy the freedoms that they secure. I want to thank mr. Murphy and the deputies from va for repairing today to help us understand how the National WorkQueues Program is functioning, now that it has been rolled out in all 56 Regional Offices. In speaking with connecticut veterans its my impression that claims backlog in our region has been reduced significantly and i want to congratulate you on that progress. However, i also want to understand some of the issues and delays bid to remain and i look forward to working with you to improve the claims process Going Forward. To the vso witnesses are today into the thousands of the its a sponsored Services Representatives in every part of the country, you are providing reassuring and dedicated assistance to veterans as they navigate the disability process and pensions process. I thank you for your commitment to veterans and to make sure it gets done right. I know we are all here the same purpose. We want to enjoy the benefits and speed and accuracy of automation. But we need to ensure that that personal touch is insured and that our veterans are treated with that care. The vso semper vita got so im looking for to hearing you today, how we get the best of both worlds, the hightech and the high touch. I know thats our objective, and we are not there yet. I think were in agreement, but i do know everyone is committed to getting us what we need to be. I will be looking forward to the testimony and working together collaboratively to get us here, i see women joined joined by the current ranking, my good friend, colleague and classmate julia brownley. And my work buddy from the gym. I see mr. Coffman has also arrived. Thank you, ms. Esty. I asked all members weigh the opening remarks as per this committees custom. Now i would like to welcome our first two, first the two panels to thank you for taking the time to be here today. I first witness is mr. Thomas murphy was the acting under secretary for benefits. Piggies accompany this morning by mr. Willie clark, the duty, deputy undersecretary for Field Operations and mr. Ronald burke, the assistant deputy under secretary for Field Operations. I want to remind the witnesses that your completed written statement will be entered into the hearing record. Mr. Murphy, you are now recognized for five minutes. Good morning chairman bowes, Ranking Member esty and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the implementation and progress related to the a National Work queues. The into the kid is a workload prioritization and distribution tool designed to match claims assigned capabilities with the capacity regardless of geographical boundaries. This tool provides the means necessary to ensure veterans receive a more timely decision on the disability claim. The nwq uses sophisticated system capabilities to uniformly prioritize va the eighth electc claim inventory and allow for the collection of enhanced data on processing efficiencies, as for Quality Improvement and issues impacting processing capabilities. This new and fiber allows va the flexibility to move claims to locations around the country that have the capacity to take the next action on the claim while maintaining the flexibility at each facility to assign work to the right person. One of the principal fundamentals of nwq is to ensure veterans are served equally regardless of where they live. Our review of claims from 2015 shows that many come in many instances the timeliness was a visual impacted based solely on the state in which a better lived. Some recent decision in 106 days while others took more than 213 days, nearly double time. This brings up inside the efficiency of the base claims model each Regional Office receives claims based on geography rather than what the capacity is to complete work. When nwq was rolled out the average pending for compensation claims was 94 days. This was reduced to 8 to 85 dayy the end of fiscal year 17, a 10 reduction. Upon receipt of a convenient default or evidence. The inventory of claims awaiting initial review was reduced from approximately 56,000, dating thousand as of the end of january 2017. The average number of days for first debarment action is dropped from almost 25 days to less than 10 in 2017. Following the initial Development Actions va prepares a rating decision to identify each disability, its severity and its relationship to military service. The out of time claims are awaiting a rating decision has dropped from about 29 days to 16 days. Once a rating decision is complete va prepares and notification for the veteran. Its dropped from eight days to four and authorization time from four days to less than two. Va continues to work towards reducing the number of claims been over 125 days. While he acknowledged some claims will take more than that we had made improvements over the past fiscal years. In 2015 va completed 45 of its claims within 125 days. As of january 2017. As of january 2017, 66 were completed within 125 days standard. Nwq is a component in one feature that built into the nwq allows va to measure the amount of rework in he a system which s never been possible before. It allows any va employee in the process to stop the light to correct the deficiency. A process similar to that used in industry to ensure high quality. Because of this we are now able to measure process defects based on feedback from our employees. As a result approximately 6500 claims reviewed in 2017 and then return to an early stage for correction. Systematically tracking these enable us to tailor training can increase accountability in the claims process. With an endeavor this large va spent a lot of time and resources on and measured change management approach to nwq implementation. Our efforts include breaking various stakeholders, training employees, publications of a transit playbook and a myriad of calls and briefings with each Regional Office. Via utilizing new data to revise direct employee Level Performance metrics and great standard reports used to improve workload management and effectively manage resources. Additionally va is bring together more than 1100 supervisors and managers for continued training on tools and best practices. While va is acclimating to this new Work Environment which at the feedback we received to heart and implement a message to increase local work assigned to Regional Offices. While we acknowledge that more work to be done its important to recognize these efforts have and continue to generate positive and significant results for veterans. This concludes my statement. I would be pleased to answer any question you or members of the committee may have. Thank you, mr. Murphy. I would like to yield myself five minutes for questions if i may. On may 2, 2016 before the nwq was fully implemented, the almost 76,000 backlog claims. Yet last week there were more than 100,000 backlog claims. The increase is about 33 over nine months. Is it the das assertion the nwq is improving effectiveness and efficiency in processing claims . Yes, sir it is. The reason is we have for the first time have the ability to look at the right mix claimant is it worked. Today the work where sending out where sending out every claim that is available to th be workd in the backlog every single day and then working back as early as claims that are less than 90 days are being pushed out to Regional Offices. We are leveraging the ability to see the exact work a case that needs to be done and sing it out to Regional Office. But from what we can see of our numbers, what specific factors are contributing to that increase that we see over the ninemonth period . Thats a concern naturally that all of us i wanted to see in the process as quick as possible but what would the agency say the reason for that arent . Im going to ask mr. Clark to run that. He runs our fuel operations. Okay. Good morning and thank you, mr. Chairman. It certainly is my pleasure to respond this morning. The first thing i would like to say is our receipts have gone up since last year one of the things that we know that as we get more efficient, more veterans are aware of benefits that are available to them, they come in and they submit more claims. Additionally, we are taking a more balanced approach to the work that we are doing. One of the things that weve done in the past and we did great work in getting the backlog down in past years, we focused probably too much on the backlog. And we have this old saying in vba that if you only work the backlog then all you work is on the backlog. We have approved nr if you stick with improved in answering phones. We had a block call rate of 60 , almost six to present a couple of years ago. And now were at 0 blocked calls. Nonrating. Those types of claims, dependency claims, we have claims, we are working those claims. So what we are doing is taking a more balanced approach, but we do understand, we do keep an eye on our backlog to make sure that we dont have our veterans waiting too long spirit that would be the concern and another part of my question is, what plans do you have, though we should work off the backlog, i agree with you on that. That alone, but thats still a major factor that we can use to say okay, how quick are we getting these processes through. And when you see the build up its concerning to us and im sure its concerning to everyone involved when you see that continue to follow. So what do we see after that we can do to speed the process up . Okay, yes, sir. Ill take that one, sir. About six months ago i took a look at what we are spending our money in terms of overtime dollars in the number of people that we had and the number of vacancies we cater to. As a result i went out to our top 25 performing offices and increase their authorized in strength. Look at my authorized in strength today, the hiring freeze we put on, we had to 50 people about authorized headcount. The reason for that is that a very high cost overtime dollars and convert in fulltime labor. Those people started in the process. It takes about a year to get at the us are up to stand and redo it. It takes up to two years. My point is this. Six logical answer that action and if you months doing better processing and you will see more raiders place within the next six months spirit the other concerned that ipad right quick, bonefish is a quick because my because my time is running out but the concern we have rather than one person did dealing with a particular claim and having it head on over and over and over again, but often can cause a lot of confusion and my concern them do that same concern that may be one person is a focusing on one claim and a past the multiple hands, do you see a problem with that . Let me ask ron to talk about this one. I had the concern but the changes we made over the last several years, its much smaller than it was. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question, and semper fi. To talk about that topic specifically, we learn, this is still a relatively new initiative that we are still learning from. We absolutely wanted to make sure that our claims the sima, our claims dissipation was matched to her capacity was. As we get more data from the nwq system wer where learning bettr ways to optimize abyss. As such one of the things we will be doing in our next release is actually maximizing the amount of work that goes to the home station. We believe that will do several things. Number one, it will most likely assign a contract to an employee that is seen it before. And as one of two former vso owes on this panel and 103 veterans, we also received Stakeholder Feedback from our vso owes that the inability to have that work assigned to the home station or family was impacting them as well. Weve heard that feedback. We have greater enhancement request i will actually in our march release almost, almost reversed the process of claims being assigned to the same station. We believe that will help with the issue of multilooks that you raised spirit just real quickly, if you can because i know my time is expired, but how many on average would you think employees handle one claim as it processes through under the existing system . What i can tell you is right now the amount of work per each step of the process steps being assigned to the home station is about 30 35 3035 of each daiy distribution. We believe with the march release that will allow us to increase the above 50 , maybe a science of mid 50s. That will significantly reduce the amount of instances where multiple employees are saying the same do you have an average . It really depends on the claim itself, so dont have a number. Three, six, eight . Normally it takes five to six touches for claim from initial development to completion to begin with. Ill turn wed like to add that number to the record then. I would like to turn over to the Ranking Member, ms. Esty. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you all for your service and your commitment to Work Together with us to serve veterans better. I want to pick up where the chapman left off, on this issue of ownership. I have a lot of Manufacturing Companies in my district. Im a thirdgeneration manufacturing daughter and granddaughter. And this issue that continues improvement does depend on ownership. The vsos have that ownership and so i think we need to figure out how we ensure that we are reducing the number of touches whataburger. You may have very complex claims and those are going to require and sugar to the people best able to do that. There are specialized claims that we know are much more fairly and rapidly processed in specialized settings, but i think we do need to work for the typical claim to keep a close to home, keep the vso is engaged and reduce the number of touches that we need to have pixel if you can talk a little bit about in addition you just spoke, mr. Burke, about in march issuing a directed to reduce that number some more of it stays in the art owes. But what are you hearing in terms of feedback that will not just reduce the time that improves the accuracy and engagement with you is going to be necessary to keep our veterans feeling serve as well as being served . Thank you for the question. Let me first start with the latest part of your question about quality. One of the things are also built into our processes, calling it a diagnostic tool. This is purely based to improve and focus on the quality of our claims processing at all steps. This is an automated feature that will run in the background as an employee is processing a claim. Before that claimants to the next step, that employee will have the opportunity to hit a diagnostic check, and its designed to get some of the major trends that we see now with missed steps or confusion in the claims process. So we believe that will help. I am actually being an endeavor, we bring 1100 and were still in the process, bring 1100 of our first line supervisor and division sheets physically into a location for training. The purpose of this training is to talk about our trends, the new reports and with great a standard suite of reports so that our supervisors can lead to better, since the issues with the claims process. But on issue of ownership, what were stressing that mozart is that weve got to treat this National Work queues and fiber like an ecosystem, meeting every action that we take on the veterans claim as a subsequent reaction. What we are stressing is we want pride in ownership from our employees and every action they take on the veterans claim, whether its the entire claim or pieces of the claimant. But to the point what we see is a value need to route more work to the local station than what we have been doing since implementation and again that feedback not only comes from our employees but from our vso partners and other stakeholders. Thank you. I want to follow up also on the question of how we are having the backlog going up. We are in a freeze right now so lets be clear. The committee has been told that vba has 760 day dashing mr. Murphy talked about how youre r redirecting money tomorrow probably try to cover but you still have those vacancies. Its our understanding this will not be exempted from the hiring ban at this point. When youre looking at the final rule establishing a new presumptive diseases associated with exposure to contaminated water at camp lejeune, thats going to set march 14. How a record to keep up youre going to see intake go up. We are going and we vacancies. Can you talk a little bit about what do you expect to happen to backlog windows cases come online . We are overstepped at this time. So the intent right up front six months ago was were going to hire ahead because it always at 1000 positions they can pick what happened was with authorized the strength at a 100 to each Regional Office. They would start the fill process for five months later a person which ought and begin training. What i did is i bumped up an additional eye in the across the nation cant tell everyone you can hide up to 105 and they followed the normal process which took them to 100 mark. Party was at the same time i spin 130 million last year on overtime. Overtime is very expensive. Why not convert some of that to permanent employees and keep rested for overtime use overtime money for crisis and searches that we have . In addition to the extra 5 5 we converted 50 at the overtime dollars and put the authorization act to feel the field to hire those individuals. Those folks now are working to our challenge process today. I did find 250 bodies over my authorized end strength from the president ial budget for 2017, and which is approximately 40 people ap. Right now, so i can write it out and still be up about end strength for the next three month posted on how the attrition rate goes before or impacted by not having people on board. The next measure would be we start looking people into direct labor position. Thats most important part, the delivery of service not to have an extra person at headquarters. So we do have a hiring freeze in place to also have a movement freeze in place where we are not allowing people to move out of our direct labor position and be promoted into other positions which leaves me, trying to get how to spin thank you and i see what i is expired but appreciate your exhalation. Thank you all very much. General, who recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Its an honor to be with all of you this morning, and thank you for all of your service both in uniform and now in a suit. The state of michigan has a very High Percentage of veterans comparatively speaking, in the First District that i represent as double the percentage of veterans as the other districts in michigan, and largely rural. So we have some unique challenges. As far as the questions im going to ask, not going to ask person specific so whoever we choose to respond, please feel free. One of the problems with nwq that delayed its implementation . Thank you, sir, for that question. As with any release in vbms we go through rigorous testing process. When we initially in candidate for the National Work queues before may, we had completed that testing. Testing and a testing five is different than acts of putting it into production in private. Testing ask anything was successful because he went to go into the production environment, we intended to do so over the course of a weekend we noticed that the actual production job, the job of pulling in claims electronically, prioritizing camilla trumpet and also staging the distribution to 56 Regional Offices took too long. Our goal is to always have claims deposit at a Regional Office and in and employees to you before they start their day. We dont want any idle time, any employee waiting for work to do. As such its important for us at our and participation job starts at around midnight and needs to finish around 4 a. M. We knows the job was taking too long and we decided to pause, go back and retool and reconfigured until the processing time could be reduced. That was the issue that caused the initial delay because we did want to put ourselves in a position where our employees did not have work available to them at the start of their workday. So in other words, you feel that by the testing of the testing that failed, if you will, of which implemented as you saw the realtime work, saw the problems without have been resolved to your status i can . Yes, sir. That actually was resolved and was the key feature if you will that allowed us to actually successfully deployed to all stations in may of 16 spin so little o. J. T . Yes, sir spirit and oj l, onthejob learning. Nwq is fused with the vbms system. We were told this system needs to be either replaced or updated. Does nwq have the ability to be compatible with new or updated benefits Management SystemsGoing Forward . So what i would say is when we designed and developed and built a National Work you it was under the auspices of vbms. It certainly owned and operated at a different entity. Ive a folding of administers that operate the National Work you but we do go through the vbms process for any enhancements, any new features et cetera. And so right now were connected solely to vbms and where dependent on vbms right now to operate. Spirit so is that a yes or no . Vbs is replace the something to restart from square one . I certainly think that if we were to do that will be dependent on integration, proper integration within your system, and im sure as part of our doing that, that would be incorporated. We would have to integrate nwq with anything if we replaced vbms. Why does it take one year after nwq limitation for the va implementation to new productivity and accuracy standards . Why did it take a year . Ill start with that one and then i will probably have willie jumping. We went with a partial rollout, started to roll up and make for the we didnt complete it until summertime and we ran it from somewhere up until two months ago, and looked at live production data using 100 of the population to develop standards which we presented to the union in february which go live on march 1. In the past weve always used sampling of a couple of people. This time we used 100 of the population across the nation over a period of six months. Arguing or discussing or negotiating what individuals can produce is no longer an issue in the setting a standard because were using what you actually produced. So all of the discussions weve had in years past about what should the number of the argonne. Its very simply, we use a statistical process, use standard deviation. Next step. It took a longer, it took us six months of life process but now we have numbers are actually write an base of what our individuals are producing on a daily basis. Thank you. I see my time is up, mr. Chairman. Ms. Brownley . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I, too, want to add my voice and thank all of you for your service to our country and your service to our veterans as well. I think, mr. Murphy, you in your opening comments talked about their still more work to be done, and theres already been discussions on where improvements can be made. Are there other areas that we havent discussed so far that youre looking at to improve the system . Weve started to gather it kind of data that wasnt available before appeared one of the things that can be focusing on his reduction of our rework. We now have the automated process that allows us to catch any time an employee indicates acclaim has to move backwards in the process. To that end, we are able to discern whether the backward movement could have been avoided or unavoidable appeared this allows us to take a look at improving training, improving gaps in policy or procedure and really taylor rain or training to meet the trends that we see. One of the biggest things this environment has allowed us to do for implementation of an automated deferral processes to capture the daily data we did not have before. That speaks more towards making sure we have the right performance standards by making sure we have the right training tools. Making sure as we create your reports for supervisors used to manage workload and employee performance when we bring them together on the same page and provide consistency that wasnt there prior. Thank you for that. In terms of bacon is committed i understand you to say will lose approximately 40 employees per pay period . Thats correct. Prior to the hiring freeze hills between 55 and 61 per pay period. A good percentage for those to other agencies. Other agencies are not hiring that would leave the federal government. The are there additional reasons why youre losing that many of . Is it advancement . Its not turnover. These are people leaving the agencies fear thats actually a low number. We read 25 , 28 . We typically run as an agency. 40 people at the population of 22,000 is just normal retirement and taken another opportunity someplace else. Back in 2013 when we were first discussed in this transition and i really do believe this transition has been certainly plenty of indications that its been successful. I want to congratulate you all in that endeavor. Obviously theres still more work to be done here. One of the fact is for those people doing the process but can emerge from the system is people who are experts across the country in a particular type of claim and with that expertise and would streamline amid the system more efficient. Is that happening . Do you see that kind of trend . We have the data appeared to havent taken any action to physically realign. The concept to talk about as lets say st. Paul, minnesota becomes experts. Without ptsd cases because theyre really good at the product. We do that at a lower level now and contaminated claims and several others we do this in pockets to concentrate low density. You talk about the center of excellence for the concentrate high volumes of work. Weve got to did it to do it now, but its not an action was taken. The certainly on the table force feature improvements. The in this weeks monday morning workload report, the los angeles Regional Office, which usurps my veterans come in the average pandanus 105 while only 100 days in fargo, north dakota. I present the va is tracking these numbers. But are you adding more people and resources in areas where you know they are going to and can anticipate more claims . Yes, maam, we are. I recall going back. I oversaw the region which l. A. Was one of those offices and there was a point in time the average climb was over six months. One of the things that we did previously, we would take cases that physically and move them via ups or really chip cases. And now, this is why we are able to do things electronically. Only aggregate average date and maintain complete tabloid significantly. We do keep track of all of our claims pending and became target or send work to places where we have capacity. Sometimes proportionately maybe certain claims in a certain amount of radiation claims or what have you maybe pen name, but on the aggregate, we send cases where we have a need to send work and capacity where it goes and it goes every day at 4 00 a. M. Then work around. I apologize. I yield back. Mr. Murphy, what percentage would you say or do you only . Ptsd only . Id have to picture detail and not. I would want to venture a guess. Let me ask you this. Is it the largest right now in terms of pending claims . In isolation, no. In combination with others, yes. Im concerned that we are not focused enough on our combat veterans in terms of the claims process. Can you give me, and again just a very rough breakdown of what i would call it each related issues in terms of the process, whether it is here a loss thats not necessarily associated in terms of being around explosion or Aviation Assets and things like that. I can tell you what we have in terms of the top at seven conditions. Traumatic brain injury high and was. Much more common as tendinitis, hearing Loss Companies come and go, back on the most frequently occurring conditions. Tell me about your shift to a more electronic system. Somehow thought to retain a paper system because the simply easier for some of the veterans that are sophisticated in terms Electronic Communications utilize. Where we had in that process . We dont work cases any longer. A small fraction of a percentage is existing in papers still. All a paperless environment. A week ago theres no paper left in philadelphia. We had a team in st. Petersburg right now. And a couple weeks there will be no paper left in that office. We are moving across the nation. By the end of next fiscal year will be done with paper and all Regional Offices. Unit and 18,000. The claims backlog is give or take 100, 200 claims. 99,000. Tell me where you want to be a year from now. I would like it to be as close to as close to zero as we can get. Thats probably 25, 30, 40,000 depending on workload. Some will never be under 25 days because you are shortchanging the veteran to go into that. Radiation claims, exposures come et cetera. Its an injustice to the veteran to force it in a 125 day process. To get to zero isnt going to have been. Not the right thing to do. They can be smaller. Any system you thought, no matter how good can get better, ours included. Weve been pushing this claims to the appeals process. In other words, if they were trying to expedite and shrink the volume in terms of the law. Registries more problems for me to deal with later. We have stopped the growth in inventory in the appeals process. Steady growth in the last three months with actually turned it and started reducing the appeals process. The reason for that is five months ago the appeals people just made them isolated. Nobody could work on anything other than appeals. So that dedicated workforce working 195 people work only on prime time, overtime, anytime working. That focus, with extra pressure in a few modifications has resulted in a flattening and starting to bring down the overall number of appeals. Inside of that, the number of appeals sitting at the the board of veterans appeals is we are producing him faster and pushing them across the board of veteran appeals, which leads us into legislation pending in congress now about appeals reform. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. Mr. Walsh from a recognize. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. Mr. Murphy, i know youve been through this whole process. As we addressed it, you adjusted fire for effect and reduce them as we were hoping would happen. I for one greatly chose not to take your talent to go elsewhere. You could be paid more and have less headaches. I do appreciate that. Its a passionate and apparent and that is what our veterans deserve. It is what they demand and its important for us because i watched you come here and numerous occasions through this, but always with a goal and not end up working together. I am appreciative of that. A couple things and this is coming from vss who i know youre a good partner with. Especially thank you to your employees. I literally watched those folks at st. Paul are wrote during the midnight oil and numerous occasions during the backlog and they brokered an a lot to them. I agree with you on this. Paying a lot of money for overtime that needed to be done. That does make more sense. On the talk about accountability, what cap about hiring freezes. We need to talk about in the long run could not only do in the long run. Our vss, they cannot find the information to the employee and are wrote to correct an error. How does that have does that have been or how do you respond to that when we say that . I will give the details to mr. Burke im not one. Sarah conor thank you. Weve tried to ensure no degradation of service or relationship between our vss at the local Regional Office. To that end, we are learning from the process. It has posed some challenges. We are adjusting virus to reference. But we have designated personnel in each Regional Office. The same Regional Office reside said that has been put on kind of a ancillary road if you will that they can serve as direct liaison between that dsl and that office no matter where the claim is the other. They reach out to facilitate those discussions. Admittedly a process we need to improve on. We are good in some areas and some would get a reminder from partners once in a while that may not be working as intended. We wanted to make sure there is that local flavor, both high technology, high touch type is a reference earlier today. But certainly in the area continue to improve. I appreciate that. These are your partners and if theyre good at it, they know and thats a force multiplier for all of us. I just end with one and you brought it up, mr. Murphy with camp lejeune and coming up on the 14th. I said this in hearing that the time. They continue to say a lot of the backlog came out of the claims of which i am glad it was approved, that we were there and i feel like i added a lot of work for you by pushing it through when the secretary added i understand that. I dont think we get the necessary upfront resources went the claims went through. Not an excuse, but certainly a reason. Are we going to be okay this time . The numbers are probably far less. And how that will be handled. Are we talking specifically about camp lejeune . In my right at march 14th . What got us bogged down as the uniqueness of the claim and the fact you had to go back and do a pageone review literally decadesold. That doesnt apply in this case. Instead of thousands of notice. It is a completely different type of work. The fact we put this up to then there will bring more volume in the door. It helped speed the process up his we funneled those two were just cannot handle it in the normal process . The the center of excellence a moment ago. If they cant handle the volume, we have to expand it. We have to keep a close eye on it. Youre focusing on it, ready to adjust to it. You dont anticipate anything near the disruption. Nothing at all. It was a tidal wave and this is going to be a real small one by comparison. Im grateful. I appreciate you being here as always. Its about service to veterans and clear as i said over the last half decade or so that youve done what you are expected to do. I feel it back. We want to thank you for your testimony. We appreciate your being here today. Any followup questions will be sent your way. Thank you for being here and for what you do and hopefully we can improve on this. Well move onto our we will move on to our next panel if thats all right. If the second panel will then come to the witness table. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] i want to say welcome to everyone in thank you for coming today. I second and includes mr. Zachary hearne, Department Director claims by the Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Division at the American Legion. The director of Veterans Benefits of busy at nonbenefits of america and mr. Ryan gallucci for the veteran foreign wars. First we will hear from mr. Mr. Hearn at the American Legion. You are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you. American legion Ronald Connolly initiated a series of business va facilities in 2003. After these visits the American Legion declared va system or saving. Over 13 years have passed since the declaration but the truth remains. The American Legion nosya is the system we are saving. Good morning chairman bos, Ranking Member sem members of the subcommittee. On behalf of the National Commander of the charles e. Smith and the 2. 2 million members of the legion, we welcome the opportunity to speak with you regarding the impact of National Work upon the adjudication of claims. Va secretary david schulz in the American Legion sentiments regarding value and place the highest of their nations veterans during his confirmation hearing. We believe the da to work with us to ensure management success. The American Legion is over 3200 representatives in each of the as Regional Offices. The level of assistance and expertise that the American Legion to represent 804,000 veterans in the last fiscal year. Many pr representatives of advocates for veterans for the fact is we could be afflicted by the kids from pa. They also implement what we are asking. The Management System are inextricably intertwined. Nwt is not viable without a properly functioning dbms that allows for the full establishing uppers for Veterans Service officers. They began in 2015 the coding and w. Q. Designed to maximize the workforce claims and more expeditious manner. The cases based on availability. The American Legion recognize potential for the program however concerns existed and continued to exist regarding implementation and execution. The adjudication of claims has historically been a local venture. A veteran residing in a given area could reasonably expect the claim to be developed and adjudicated at the local va Regional Office. Much of the advocacy is built on internal relationships within offices in nwt would suffer some of those relationships. They would serve as the first filter where the claims of the adjudicated. This has proven untrue. The Regional Office or break decreased adjudication from veterans for minnesota for 99 to 30 over the course of two years. The major complaint for Service Officers is the fact vb ms does not have the ability to let representatives of claims. They have established a 48 hour window to review claims. They have rendered the case to the allotted period of time. The American Legion and by the last school in july 2016, Service Officers brasserie said. Lower hands if they come across a case removed from adjudication review prior to the 48 hour window. Not one hand was raised. This turns have been raised to be a get the problem continues to linger. Even at the local representative for the claim was adjudicated it would be of little assistance. Representative is not familiar with the veteran unassociated claim. Any Service Officers are employed by state agencies by local tax dollars. Employees were to assist veterans in their state. Its unfair to assist veterans outside of their jurisdiction. The American Legion regularly conducts quality review. Last year we met to discuss the impact than dave yukio. However, others have concerns. These concerns existed from employees to senior leadership. The va employees noted a disconnect exists. A developer or one may not develop claim to the degree required another location passing added delays in the process. Another involved to redistribute a substantial amount of development at the Regional Office. Despite the bulk of the work, it does not receive the credit. Once an invader stated its disheartening to have the bulk of the work. This could hurt a row. Theyre taking Great Strides in reducing the backlog from its peak in march 2013. They need to believe the organizations are stakeholders in advocates that could be used to improve product. Ranking member on behalf of the nations largest Veterans Services, any questions you may have. Mr. Gallucci. Recognized for five minutes. The members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the accelerate, to testify on the issue. I know my written testimony of the situation looks dire but i want to clarify it supports and we believe they can maximize efficiency using every resource at it disposal to deliver consistent quality accurate and timely benefits to veterans. Nwq shows this. The final process represented by the accredited vfw. Unfortunately the issue is so complex that we saw prudent every way we believe the ability and our ability as advocates to provide Quality Customer service to our veteran clients. A decadesold policy, va allows the final quality review and rating decisions, allowing us to identify potential errors and get them corrected before the vision is sent to the veteran. They see this as a chance to ensure they get it right the first time they signed vfw analysis, one out of every 10 claims that we cost us and we can usually work to fix them before the veteran never knows. This is not only a positive for veterans reserve, but also a better benefit to va. They can perform quality review some of ratings and explain context of the decision to veterans. Would have done appeals and build confidence in the system. On a local scale, they become stronger b. Ba staff be more meticulous readers and veterans receive consistent accurate and timely benefit decisions. Of the policy has been supported by the management, vfw has seen office is potentially react into pressures on product typically will finalize decisions before the 48 hours expire. Receiving end of the key ratings out of Regional Offices while they are still in the 48 hours being representatives move objects producing broker workstations finalize rating decision for work under their jurisdiction is no bso representatives present in the opposite in accordance with an 211. This makes it impossible for the representatives who originated claims to track their work regardless of filtering work through dbms. A zip code filtering and potential new field to filter by station of of origination that has reticulated in a written remarks, these do not solve the overall problem. Objective has accredited to service the public facing advocate to help veterans navigate complex benefits system. As such realign resources to need to the Community Sbc in north dakota for the special mission of the Regional Office that we see in winston, salem with the predischarge claims. When the fab takes power of attorney for a veteran client, the better it is placing his or her trust to serve as a policy advocated not just filing for benefits, but also ensuring toward benefit is accurate. Representatives must build trust and credibility was not on the clients but also local colleagues to properly advocate for veterans. In advocates do not have the opportunity to review work for client, everybody suffers. At first it may look at the va is able to send up more quickly but this is no good as a decision is inaccurate. We have lost local advocacy. The vfw asked on nwq is twofold. The station of origination so that the bso representatives most familiar can conduct a proper review. Second, like the 48 hour clock so ba staff cannot pull the rating decision before they click review or the 48 hour lapses. Third, allow bso to mark so they can track potential errors and was staff accountable for addressing any potential errors. The vfw Police Infrastructure execs to execute the steps in as a more simple solution of building a filtering option in the dbms. Our partner has asked for the solution sends first proposed. We worry these requests have been pushed aside in favor of the vas entire novel priority. We understand how objectives to improve work product or purpose today is to demonstrate to this committee that the bso priority. We want to work with the subcommittee to make this successful. If the da can execute deliverables, we will, we live it is an admission that tying quality and consistent veterans. This concludes my testimony and are happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, mr. Gallucci. We want to recognize the just for purposes of boston. Boston. Everybody does it. Ill just go and do it so everyone knows. This yoon. Thank you. Good morning. Ranking member st, thank you for inviting us to testify about the impact on claim processing. Vba is supportive of using technology to create a better claim system. However, not at the expense of accuracy, be very proveteran claims process. Currently it is easier to track your fedex package and a va claim va has sidelined vso during development and implementation of the National Work you by not prioritizing the crucial role of Service Representatives. Consequently, the proveteran claim process has suffered to the gesture to the veteran into the veteran. Vba is less concluding as a tool to eliminate the backlog and nothing else. Vba strongly opposes the expansion of the National Work here to appeal in nonreading claims until adding that among the three recommendations with a work in a written statement carefully implemented. But lets take a stand to briefly discuss three barriers to the claims process the vba currently experiences as a direct result of the National Work here. First, some ones are unable to track accurately claims that need review before a final decision is issued. For example, if Service Officer if Service Officer files a claim in seattle, washington, the claim can be kicked to atlanta. That Service Officers unable to trackback claim to its rating decision been issued. Vba believes in our Service Officers are unable to review claims they filed, va is the pricing veterans of their right to representation. For more than two years, vba has stressed the importance of the station of origin search filter that continues to give this request zero priority. Adding a station of origin will permit Service Officers who filed the claim to be able to confidently assess their veterans to the entire claims process regardless of the claim adjudicated in another station. Second barrier, assuming the vso is able to identify which claimed it has been sent to, va has yet to provide accurate Contact Information for each station. Often the email addresses provided are incorrect, leaving the vso unsure of who to contact at the outofstate station. This is extremely important in trying to contact her in the 48 hour review period. Finally, the third carrier. Even if we have the correct Contact Information, it is difficult to receive a timely response if we get one at all. Since implementation of the National Service representatives are further from the claims process and then send instant as locked out entirely. Consequently, vba has been forced to more claims than previously adds to the backlog. All of these problems did not have been pretty National Work you because Service Representatives develop working relationships at their home station and all claims were adjudicated in the same state for the veteran resides. The veteran benefit claims process is a unique adjudicatory system. It takes to be nonadversarial and proveteran. Bba urges va to prioritize recommendations made in a written statement said the veterans and representatives are again included in the claims process. Thank you for the opportunity for vba to share our thoughts on this issue. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. The first five minutes of questioning. Mr. Hearn, number of backlog claims to assert the project 76,000 now, about 101,000 or thereabouts. Do you think the nwq actually has improved the situation or not . The American Legion has noted there has been an increase in the backlog of claims during this period of time esparza that contributes to the backlog i couldnt say. But it certainly hasnt decreased it as the numbers would bear. With suggestions good with suggestion which you have to improve this . Again, a lot of it when we go through and look at how these claims have been adjudicated or processed in the system, theres a lot of backandforth going on between the vs are and the raiders. Lets just say you take a poor performing Regional Office and that developer cuts the mustard as far as they are concerned fair, then it goes to a higher performing area or they wouldnt expect that its been a necessary development. The reader ends up taken aback and are slowed the process down. The person couldve walked across the Service Center and said hey, look, we need to fix this in the schedule and expand and do this level of develop it. I think that some of these issues are probably contributing to a certain extent. Okay, that kind of leads to this question. Right now, i ask you specifically what input you would have your organization. I will ask this of all three members. As the va asked what he can do to improve this and what has been the response. We have offered solutions and continue to ask thank you, mr. Chairman. I do want to reiterate what mr. Hearn said because that was an overarching theme in her testimony as well. We make requests on things they need to prioritize and change in their business processes. But we dont know where the stand on their list of over a priorities. But we try to convince our priorities are just at the vba, American Legion. They are priorities of veterans who serve and provide the customer facing advocates it. Men and women walking tour offices, call out system and develop interpersonal relationship with our representatives in so we need to provide that personal advocacy for them. It becomes a problem, not to be an too much of a tangent, but in different offices with hurt and it totally sometimes these duplicate work happening so they may order an exam that wasnt necessarily needed or it will get kickback into the process someplace they did need to be. I think my recommendations would likely echoed the American Legion in improving the business flow of this Regional Office it is good to hear the one about 50 of the work to stay at the Regional Office pictures section. Again, i dont know if that will solve their problem. Automation has potential to improve this is. I would also concur with mr. Hearn and mr. Gallucci. Vba for years have been working to try to explain what we need in order to assist the claims process. Like i mentioned, because of our inability to properly track and assess claims that the original Service Officer who worked on it, it forces us to appeal clancy would have had to appeal, thereby adding to the backlog. So i would just emphasize that again is mr. Gallucci said, we are all on the same team. We are trying to do the same thing. The final and just decision at the lowest level possible. The recommendations that we put forth to seek to achieve that. Let me tell you, this committee is on the same team at the u. S. Well. You actually brought up the fact that quite often the communications, the wrong email address. Yeah, so as was earlier stated, the va has provided a Contact Person or generic mailbox. So if we dont know who to contact, we are issued email this email address, either personal email address, someones name at va. Gov or corporate email address. Those email addresses are often wrong and will send email to the person were supposed to contact them if we get a response, youre contacting the wrong person. So the request that weve made in our rich statement is that va published on its website and at database be a desert he understands theres turnover in the personal contacts have switched. They need to provide the realtime updated to Service Organizations so that we know who to contact at that point. Thank you. Turn it over to the Ranking Member. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I take it we are all on the same page and i think it will be up to us in congress to prioritize issues to better serve veterans. Part of what weve been out a lot of focus on backlog. If we want these quality measures and transparency and accountability in place, we need to prioritize that and that is why we are thinking you for your partnership with us in ensuring that happens. Again, i have no doubt the va wants us to. If it not prioritize from someone who can assist or not, it may not have been. Its a 50 goal enough . We heard from mr. Murphy that their goal is now to return 50 for the 50 in the rl. Any thoughts from the three of you whether we think thats an appropriate goal . First of all, thank you for that question. I have some thoughts on that. You may have seen in talking about some of these some of these solutions, they really do seem like workarounds. An objective to have 50 of the work in the station of origination sounds good. Dont get me wrong. Having the station of origination filtered and vp advanced is better, but not 100 solution for the reasons i pointed out before. The manual allows va to immediately promulgate decisions if we have no vso representative in the Office Spirit or background, the way resources are aligned, sometimes they do have turnover in its offices. The example in my written testimony was a Regional Office at the vacancy at the moment. We out of our headquarters for tracking the claimant in the hopes of reviewing the rating decision when it was posted for the 48 hour review period. The 48 hour review. Never happened because the Regional Office was, getting decisions. If we had the station of origination filter, it would have helped us with that veteran. Whats interesting about this specific case is va failed to evaluate one of the conditions on the claim and it resulted in an additional eightmonth ordeal for the veteran and vfw to resolve the issue. Thats 50 station of origination work doesnt really solve the problem. Our testimony was more of a wish list. If we had optimal, weve returned to the slo, freeze the clock so they cant pull it back into the National Work . And allow us to Mark Readings as queried as opposed to just reviewed or lapsed. Thank you. Thats really helpful. I am thinking we managed to crack the code and immigration cases, a coding system to use that allowed us to track. As you mentioned, whos handling the case, and i think that i be sent if we want to explore in more detail. Could we do better coding so you would know who was in charge. So that person is no longer there. You would be able to go and look at that and say wait a minute, win32 is not there. So we have to find out whos not taking over the cases. It seems to me the technology out to be able to offer us that transparent and accountability, but we may need to push va to prioritize encoding this in a way that allows us to know who we contact to get realtime information. I dont know if he done any work on mac, but maybe we can look at utilizing exactly this technology to say if we are going to use that, lets use it for the benefit of veteran, not just reduce backlog, but have that accountability. I welcome your thoughts on whether we use technology to solve this problem. Ranking member steve, i would like to followup on that. Another point about the list of points of contacts made in the Regional Offices. This becomes problematic because it takes reporting of errors outside of the digital environment. How va is tracking all of their work. Mr. Murphy articulated they been able to glean so much data from their that they are able to identify breakdowns in the business process and hold individuals accountable. If we find errors theres no such opportunity. I having to send a separate email to a staffer or corporate inbox, theres no accountability for reporting errors. When we click reviewed or that the 48 hour slaps to expire, there is no accountability on the back end that we found an error. It was an address within a timely manner. Thats one of the reasons we are asking to mark them as queried. Thank you. That would be great if we could follow if configured how does that. Thats a really important point. If we are getting incomplete data about the error rate, that is really only figure out how to code that. I think we should continue on with that. Thank you very much. First of all, takes to all of you for all you do for the veteran, the veteran Service Organizations very in their scope and populations that they serve. I am hoping for all of you that you are working very hard to encourage those veteran whether they join the American Legion, vfw, Vietnam Veterans of america. We need to go what is going on in lung to youngsters. To all of you, the va has claimed the tree in the lab and consistency and accuracy from the perspective of the view of the vso, have you noticed improvement in these areas . The American Legion conducts quality review visits every year. We just had returned from san juan last week and to their credit, they are vastly improved from where they were 18 to 24 month ago. I was stuck in 10 did the American Legion houses dork lee gifford and what the definition of areas with va. A static appellate rate or declining appellate rate is strictly bad. That doesnt mean the quality is better. It means less people have appealed. Typically 20 to 30 of error rate is what we see. But we determine if there was something done wrong in the development process. Not just replete the yes or no grant or denial of benefits. It certainly isnt the panacea to the as problems as far as that is concerned. General berkman, thank you for that question. And its tough to draw a conclusion at this point. National work you is what we wanted to get out in front of this and appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee on the issue today because from the vfw is, the big work efficiently in a Digital Space around va has potential to improve accuracy. I dont think we are there yet. They center on review of trading decisions, we find one in 1000 error. Thats fairly consistent it a few months ago we were up closer to two in 10. Whether thats true its tough to say. The selfreported decreasing over the past few years. When they break down and is also directly correlated to the number of issues. When the two issues are more likely to be accurate than if you have seven at 12 issues in that claim. That becomes a problem because veterans are claiming more issues as they become more aware of the benefits to which they are entitled. I think from the perspective is to tune to tell, but one of our objectives here today is get in front of it and make sure va can provide us with the tools we need to look them accountable for any errors and fix them before we go out the door. I dont have too much to add. I conferred with both statements are due may. I would just emphasize that i do agree it is too early to determine whether it is helping. I do agree that there is potential that the Additional Data that we can get from the National Work . However, i would also emphasize that if we continue along the pathway that we are without including the vso into the process of the claims process, it could potentially have very negative impact on the accuracy of decisions. Thank you. Mr. Hearn, how do you feel the va handled the rollout of and bbq . Nwq. It is interesting because when va was testifying, the statement had been made that they are just now hearing that cases are being adjudicated at the local level as much as the vso floodlight. We were initially told the right of first refusal was a local Regional Office. When you drop a 90 plus down to 30 in minnesota, that is not even the majority. And so, that has been a big problem with us. Is not only that, that dealing with the issues of claims development at not getting our mail. That is what we are hearing from Service Officers as we want our mail back. If something happens along the claims process as far as development is concerned, unless the Service Organization is specifically putting the claims numbering, theres no way for the representative to know. We need this information as well. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you over your testimony. It seems to me that this is a Pretty Simple problem to resolve and there should be ways in which it can be resolved. I would just ask the chairman and the Ranking Member if we dont have the va here now and so we cant ask them that question. We need to ask the question, you know, when are you going to take these recommendations in . When will you have a response to them . We believe its a priority and we want to make it a priority for you. When will that happen in the can they report back to make sure that it does indeed happen . I mean, you know, within the va sent out a sheet when this process was going to be incorporated. They made a strong commitment that the relationship between vso and our own managers will not change as a result of the new process, nwq. You are making it clear to all of us. Timeliness of the benefit claims are clearly important. The quality of those claims and the role that you play and their relationship to the veteran at home is equally as important. I hope that we can clear this up sooner rather than later. I just wanted to ask, can the veterans check the status of their claims through their deep benefit accounts . Yes, they can. But its not like dominoes where you know for certain theyre putting shoes on the pizza. Sometimes they are putting the cheese on the pizza, but they are putting the sauce. Its not a good reporting structure. Its not a good reporting structure because . From the input ill get calls from veterans in my op is. The benefits as this. Ill be lucky not it not matching up exactly. I have raised this issue before going back years. I said again, using dominoes sets an example, if they can figure that out, as far as what toppings they put on the pizza, why cant va use a Similar Technology . Ive never gotten a good response am not. That would be an easy solution like you are talking about. Okay. I really dont have any more questions. It seems the problems have been laid out pretty clearly. I think to resolve it seems to be Pretty Simple. I will yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Let me ask each of you first. Do you think when we switch to the new system, for the claims processors up to speed and ready to go, where they trained up for this . Mr. Hearn, start with you. You may not va side of representatives . Be a side. Anytime you implement a system there will be new problems. Atlarge i would say that they were trained on how to do it. I think one of the things we need to caution with this everything is getting more electronic. They are letting all this information out of the system. We still need the Human Element in this. Too much of an Alliance Within the network when they were saying at the computer shows this could be potentially an error to avoid a quality review, they wont override that. That sometimes has been the probably noted in there. It has been my experience when working with the employees that theyve been properly trained. I would tend to agree that there was proper training prior to implementation however because this was such a complex overhaul, the unforeseen consequence is made up much more problematic, at least on iran as vso with just how much work was moving around. I pointed out in my testimony that they moved work for three discharge programs in claims. There were hiccups all up and down the va system on this. Our rating review specialist in winstonsalem have identified a number of claims disappearing during the 48 hour . When we reported it to va, they didnt think it was happening at first feared it took about two days of backandforth in providing claim numbers and a hard counter the claims that were pulled back from whence the income assailant had had been rating review. To attend assigned to the cloud with the jurisdiction for 99 for the National Work you. They didnt believe us at first. They almost didnt recognize this is happening within their own business process. I think there are a lot of unforeseen complications with the rollout of National Work . One of the reasons we wanted to come here and articulate as, not to take too many shots at va, but we want to be a constructive partner and this is what we see on the ground and we hope they will be responsive to the needs of our clients and veterans who served. This yoon. Thank you for the question. I would agree the training is generally sufficient. However, one thing that was exposed in future often have their own internal procedures and systems. When a claim is then to another our row and if we are used to a certain system, the other might do something else. The lack of consistency in across each office as i believe that more apparent in the hope is in the near future that is sent and that could hold only be standardized. Very quickly, if you all had, where i think over 90,000 in terms of our claims blog right now. So weve made some progress that weve got a lot of progress to go. If you are going to identify one issue as the leading issue at the Veterans Administration is to change in order to reduce the backlog, what with that issue be. Mr. Hearn, lets start with you. Thats a big question, congressman. Honestly, this isnt going to impact the backlog as much as its going to impact the appeals and quality of the decisions. But to stop and look at what youre doing as a raider, that has been one of the biggest problems facing. Is the reason is that a 50 rate and a 25 grant rate at the board because nobody is sitting back and thinking about what they are doing when it comes to these decisions. Congressman, thank you so my head nodding a number of times. It has to do with conflating timeliness and accuracy. Theres so much focus on the time it takes to get the claim at the door. Weve got to go through this process fast, fast, fast. We are finding that haste makes waste. A common euphemism. Pardon my dad joke. It becomes a problem because our client comes to know we reviewed our row. And what we are claiming this accurate to va to get to the iteration the entire evidence that makes it easier on the backend. The board of veterans appeals docket data is back several years and that is just harder on those veterans. They may have a rating decision is probably inaccurate. We want to get this right the first time. This becomes a problem with the 48 hour review because sometimes we been told we just need to get the rating out there. The veteran is that quickly. We are talking about two days in 125 day process. In the clients that we work with, they understand if they get two days for a quality check, its really not going to affect it. It will only affect benefits for the positive on the backend. That todays example time for them to make sure the rating decision is accurate. Ms. Yoon. Im over time. Yes, i would emphasize possibly to reevaluate where Credit System that va employees house because again, there is this emphasis on speed and there is not as much as in the process on accuracy. Our accuracy measurements may be different than va accuracy, but there needs to be an emphasis on reviewing the entire development, looking to see if theres any more Development Aid at and most importantly if an exam has been issued, was not adequate . One of the most common reasons we see cases kickback is because the exams inadequate. Thats an example of something that can be worked on and improved at vba. First off, let me say thank you for being here, but also let me tell you the chairman of the new positioning as god made an error. Error as i let the va did this room before you spoke. I think that they should be here. I think you should get answers to those questions. If it is to be done in front of this committee, thats exactly where i think it needs to be done so we can hold them accountable because i think the idea in intent of this program is good. We want the process to be as smooth as possible. When it takes away your ability to be the advocates that you need to be and not saying the va doesnt have their best interests, the interests of the veteran, but youd be the overseers you are, we want you to have the opportunity to do that. We will agree to this at some time and make sure that we can tell the va we want to see a progress state of where we are at and where communications are broken up with you. I say that with this committee that we will definitely move forward and do that again. Thank you so much for being here today. The committee is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] the u. S. Senate is about to convene. Do both at 10 30. One on Mental Health background checks in the second to advance the nomination of represented makeable day to head of the office of management and budget. A confirmation vote could occur sometime today or tomorrow. More cabinet nominations later this week as well as confirmation votes on those nominees. Live coverage of the senate here on cspan2. The president pro tempore the senate will come to order. The chaplain, dr. Barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. O god, who is the strength of our lives, let us live to tell of your wondrous works