Veterans Affairs banner with U.S. FlagVeterans Affairs banner with U.S. Flag

Office of Budget

Fiscal Year 2004 Performance and Accountability Report
Published November 15, 2004

Back to Table of Contents

Objective 3.2

FY 2004 Obligation ($ in Millions) % of Total VA Resources
Strategic Goal 3: Honor and serve veterans in life and memorialize them in death for their sacrifices on behalf of the Nation. $23,293 33.3%
Objective Performance Results
3.2 Process pension claims in a timely and accurate manner to provide eligible veterans and their survivors a level of income that raises their standard of living and sense of dignity.
  • Improved to an average of 166 days the timeliness for completing rating-related actions on C&P claims (goal was 145 days)
  • Average days pending for C&P rating-related actions increased to 118 days (goal was to decrease to 80 days)
  • Improved to 87 percent the national accuracy rate for C&P core rating work (goal was 90 percent)
$3,501 5.0%

Performance

VA's top priority related to the many benefits programs the Department administers is to process claims in a timely and accurate manner. There are many measures that indicate how well we are doing in meeting Objective 3.2, but the three most important indicators of success are the average number of days to process rating-related compensation and pension (C&P) claims, the average number of days pending for rating-related C&P claims, and the national accuracy rate for C&P claims. While the Department did not meet the FY 2004 performance goal for any of these three measures, we reduced the time required to process claims for compensation and pension benefits, while at the same time improved the high degree of accuracy with which these claims were processed. Entering FY 2004, VA was well positioned to meet our performance goals pertaining to the timeliness of processing claims. However, a September 2003 decision by the Federal Circuit Court in the case of the Paralyzed Veterans of America et al. v. the Secretary of Veterans Affairs required VA to keep veterans' claims open for 1 year before making a decision. As a result, decisions on over 62,000 claims were deferred, many for as much as 90 days or longer. While the President signed correcting legislation in December 2003, the impact of the court decision in the early portion of FY 2004 was substantial. The number of claims pending grew dramatically and the timeliness of claims processing deteriorated rapidly. VA made significant progress during the last half of the year, but we were not able to fully overcome the negative effects from this court decision on our claims processing timeliness.

The Survey of Veterans Satisfaction with the VA Compensation and Pension Claims Process is administered on an annual basis in order to measure veteran satisfaction at the national and regional office levels. In FY 2003 (the most recent annual data available), 39 percent of all survey respondents receiving pension benefits felt they were informed of the full range of their available benefits. This figure is 1 percentage point higher than the previous year's value. When looking at compensation and pension recipients together, the survey revealed that 59 percent were very or somewhat satisfied with the way their claims were handled. This was 3 percentage points higher than the satisfaction level 2 years earlier. The contract for the next survey was signed in September 2004. Data for FY 2004 will be available in January 2005.

Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) Evaluation

The PART review of the pension program that relates to the accomplishment of Objective 3.2 is scheduled to be conducted during FY 2005 as part of the formulation of the FY 2007 budget. The results of this upcoming PART review will be presented in future reports.

Major Management Challenges

The major management challenges related to this objective are the same as those for Objective 1.2.

Program Evaluations

There have not been any recent independent evaluations of VA's pension program that are related to Objective 3.2.

New Policies and Procedures

New policies and procedures have been implemented recently in support of Objective 3.2. For example, VA has:

  • Expanded the use of the Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD) program at military installations around the country. Conducted in close collaboration with the Department of Defense, the BDD program assists active duty military personnel in filing claims for benefits at or near their time of discharge in order to expedite the processing of these claims.
  • Identified service center teams within distinct functional areas to allow for greater workload control, development of expertise by the staff, higher quality decisions, and more efficient and timely processing of claims.

Beginning in FY 2005, VA will track a variety of performance measures relating to the timeliness, accuracy, and quality of pension claims processing. This will be the first year the Department will collect and report on claims processing data separately for the pension program. Prior to this, data on the pension program were combined with claims processing information on the disability compensation program.