Report Summary

Title: Review of VBA’s Transition to a Paperless Claims Processing Environment
Report Link: http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-11-04376-81.pdf
Report Number: 11-04376-81
Issue Date: 2/4/2013
City/State: Salt Lake City, UT
Providence, RI
Wichita, KS
Fort Harrison, MT
VA Office: Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA)
Office of Information and Technology (OIT)
Report Author: Office of Audits and Evaluations
Report Type: Audits, Reviews & Evaluations
Release Type: Unrestricted
Summary: In May 2012, the House Appropriations Committee directed the VA OIG to evaluate the VBMS to determine whether VA has performed sufficient systems testing. Our review included assessing whether VBA is positioned to meet its goal of eliminating the claims backlog and increasing the accuracy rate of processing claims to 98 percent by 2015. We also evaluated the effectiveness of VBA’s efforts to scan and digitize veterans’ claims to support paperless claims processing. We found, as of September 2012, in the early stages of VBMS system development, VA had not fully tested VBMS. The system had not been fully developed to the extent that its capabilities could be sufficiently evaluated and the partial deployment to date has experienced system performance issues. VA officials stated they have taken action to improve digitization of veterans’ claims including better organization of electronic claims folders.