Review of Alleged Removal of Workload Controls at the VARO in San Juan, PR

In August 2015, the VA OIG Hotline received complaints alleging San Juan VA Regional Office (VARO) staff were improperly removing workload controls for claims from the Veterans Benefits Administration’s (VBA) workload management system. The End Product system is VBA’s primary electronic workload monitoring and management tool and claims identified as EP 930 require additional processing, which may not have been properly performed before the removal of the claims from the system. Further, the EP 930 workload was allegedly a recurring weakness for the VARO. We substantiated the allegation. Specifically, claims processors inaccurately removed six of the 30 cases we sampled; improperly terminating these veterans’ claims without appropriate review and processing. One error delayed paying a veteran about $23,000 in benefits by more than three years and the remaining five errors had the potential to affect veteran benefits. We also confirmed that processing of this workload was a challenge for the Veteran Service Center (VSC) management. Because VSC management did not ensure staff followed plans to process this workload, the inventory continued to increase. To address these conditions, we recommended the VARO Director develop and implement a plan to review all cases that claims processors removed from its inventory in August and September 2015, during an initiative specific to the EP 930 workload. Additionally, we recommended the Director monitor the effectiveness of current plans to manage this workload. The VARO Director concurred with our recommendations and provided an acceptable plan for corrective actions. We plan to follow up on the implementation of these corrective actions.