Program aims to streamline disability evaluations for vets

Sick and injured military members navigate a bureaucratic maze when they leave the service and transfer into the Veterans Affairs health care system.

On average, it takes 540 days - 18 months - for a recently disabled service member to enroll in the VA and sometimes as long as six months to start receiving disability benefits.

A newly expanded pilot program starting locally in March aims to streamline the process, reducing the typical enrollment timeline to 295 days or less.

Noel Koch, a deputy undersecretary of defense, said the so-called disability evaluation system is one of many initiatives being pursued jointly by the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs.

"This is a major initiative," Koch said in a recent phone interview. "It involves huge amounts of brainpower and time."

The joint effort will be handled by Veterans Affairs employees or contractors at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center.

The pilot project abolishes a two-phase system in which military doctors determine whether a soldier or sailor is fit to serve and recommend a disability rating - only to have VA staff administer a second round of physicals and determine a disability rating.

In addition, the pilot program will help eliminate inconsistencies in disability ratings given by various military branches and the VA.

Disability rating percentages, given in 10 percent increments up to 100 percent, determine how much money a disabled veteran receives each month, and whether the individual qualifies for health insurance. (Service members with a disability rating below 30 percent do not get Tricare insurance.)

Traditionally, if a soldier or sailor was no longer physically able to serve, a military physical evaluation board would recommend a disability rating percentage. That percentage often didn't match the disability rating eventually given by the VA. Compounding the problem, branches of service would rate various conditions differently, which led to widespread complaints about unfair standards.

The pilot program consolidates the disability rating process into a single step, and should lessen complaints about Air Force veterans getting better or worse ratings than Navy vets, for instance. The new program allows individuals given a 20 percent rating or lower to appeal their rating to a disability review board, Koch said. Since it started in June, he said, it has reversed more rulings than it has upheld.

Bob Snyder, the VA's executive director for collaboration with the Defense Department, said the pilot program is "past the point of no return. It's been a huge success, and it will be implemented fully."

Snyder said the biggest improvement for veterans is speedier benefits. Under the old system, it might have taken six months for basic paperwork to clear before veterans started receiving their benefits.

The pilot program has reduced that to 28 days, he said.

Snyder said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki is committed to working hand-in-hand with the military.

"This is the beginning of a different kind of relationship between VA and DOD," Snyder said, using an acronym for the Department of Defense.

Veterans groups have grown increasingly critical of bureaucratic delays, and individually, some have developed an adversarial relationship with an agency that's supposed to be their advocate.

They've also successfully lobbied Congress to fix glaring problems in the system.

Koch said that's what veterans deserve.

"This is not a philanthropic effort on the part of the DOD," he noted - some of the changes are required by the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act.

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com