It would be interesting to see a comparison of performance with years gone by.

Specifically, claims dealt with vs either employees allocated to the task, or funding allocated to the task.

The size of the backlog could be inefficiency or something. But my suspicion is that its just a matter of a great many more people applying, without a corresponding increase in the deparment assigned to deal with those applications.

IE if you have 10 people to deal with 10,000 claims, and then the next year, you hire a new person, so you have 11 folks, but 50,000 claims come in, your going to have a backlog.

VA resources for claims processing have been increased under the Obama Administration, but it may not be the fault of managers if even the increased resource level is inadequate to meet increased demand.

And part of the problem may be of the VA's own making if their performance standards for claims adjudicators reward employees who clear claims by ignoring supporting evidence submitted by veterans, arbitrarily deny claims, or nickel-and-dime claimants by awarding unjustifiably low ratings. Those kinds of actions force veterans to appeal or re-submit their claims, leading to even more workload for VBA claims adjudicators.

What you describe sounds entirely likely as well.

Anyone who has worked with the VA in in way is aware of its shortcomings.

That said, I'd chose it over any other health care system in the US, given the opportunity.

The problem is not with VA health care, but with the administrative side--especially the claims process. Unfortunately, I have to deal with what is probably the most incompetent part of the system--the L.A. Regional VA Office.

it's paid to meet or exceed your objectives as defined at the beginning of each year. And one of the executive's objectives should have been reducing the wait time for veterans asking for help. They got a big fat F- on this one.

The VA still has a shitload of paper files to convert to electronic media AND their computer systems suck. As in 1980's suck.

Eventually that project was scrapped and and started over. That was a quarter century ago, my friend has died, and the goal still has not been accomplished.

with an astounding lack of success.

I worked on a Verizon (I think we were Bell Atlantic at the time) project 20 some years ago that was going to solve billing problems which was the Holy Grail at the time. After a six month study, the executives were dismayed that the fix to the billing problems would not happen for 2 1/2 year period after the project started.

Being as executives are smarter than IT professionals we were ordered to started working on the billing system immediately. In other words, we don't have the time to fix all the backend systems that need to be fixed for the billing rewrite to succeed. Like trying to solve world hunger, that effort failed and degenerated into a highly-paid contractor-led effort to produce anything. Which meant we produced nothing.

Something similar to this must have occurred on the many attempts to fix the DoD/VA computer systems.

I think the latest effort also was scrapped.

archaic and non-intuitive at best. IMO, the VA's scheduling system is one of the worst I've seen - you need to know keystroke sequences (plural) to get to the correct screen. Example: To schedule an appointment,

1. Go to main VISTA screen
2. Hit Enter
3. Enter last initial, last four of vet's SSNO
4. Hit Enter
5. Select Schedule. hit Enter
6. Search for Primary Care Provider's (the vet's doctor/PA/etc. appointment schedule
7. Select and hit Enter
8. Hit Enter
9. Enter date/time group
10. Hit Enter
11. To print schedule, hit Enter thrice, highlight number 11 to print to local printer, hit Enter again to print the appointment for the veteran.

Like I said, non-intuitive.

They do not talk to DoD systems (you can look up the veteran's DD-214 and DoD record but cannot import any of this info into the VA system). Throw in the paper records issue and you've guaranteed failure.

And that's where we currently stand.

In my community we have a quarterly Outreach to Veterans (formerly called Stand Down for Homeless Veterans).

At these events we usually have a dozen or two VA employees there with their laptops on a Saturday to establish VA eligibility for the veterans attending.

Our regional VA office in L.A. sucks, but the VA workers who come out to these Outreach events are great! I've had the privilege of working with them at our events and I cannot speak highly enough about them. They are the best!