Testifying before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs on June 26, AFGE Local 2823 President James Swartz, which represents the Clevland, Ohio Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) Regional Office, identified important reforms that the VA should make in its National Work Queue, also known as the NWQ, which electronically distributes the workload of the VA benefits claims among regional offices.
These recommendations would better enable AFGE claims processors to more efficiently and effectively serve veterans. Swartz explained the expertise required to correctly process complex claims, including those involving Military Sexual Trauma (MST), radiation, and Camp Lejune water contamination, and how that talent and dedication serves veterans.
AFGE encourages VBA to continue to leverage employees’ expertise in complex claims while also allowing employees to grow and adjust to veterans’ and VBA’s evolving needs.
The VBA should also improve the workflow under its NWQ. Currently, despite a six figure claims backlog, many claims processors do not have enough work to meet their performance metrics based on how the NWQ distributes work to regional offices. The employees have to frequently ask for more claims to work on. The NWQ should automatically provide claims to an individual claims processor’s work queue when they are out of cases to develop or rate.
The VBA should also modify the NWQ so that cases remain within the same regional office for the duration of the claims process. Despite uniform production standards and training, regional offices often have their own way of conducting specific tasks. When the NWQ sends claims between different regional offices, misunderstandings and miscommunication between VBA workers at separate facilities not only causes delays in processing but can also lead to certain claims being wrongly deferred and delayed.
Swartz also argued that the VBA should use the NWQ to ensure that claims processors who work on a claim that requires a deferral or has an error, go back to the same employee to allow employees to use their time efficiently and learn from their mistakes.
“By keeping claims in one RO for the duration of their processing, managers who assign work would be more in control to send claims where a Rating Veterans Service Representative caught an error or required a deferral back to the original Veterans Service Representative. This would allow the VSR to learn from the error so as to not repeat it,” Swartz said.
AFGE, which represents over 300,000 employees at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, including frontline workers at the VBA, thanks Subcommittee Chairman Morgan Luttrell (R-TX), Ranking Member Chris Pappas (D-NH), and subcommittee staff for attending a roundtable on VBA during AFGE’s Legislative Conference in February earlier this year, considering AFGE’s input on the NWQ, and holding this hearing.
It is our hope that Congress and the VBA will heed the advice and expertise of Swartz to improve the NWQ system and ensure that veterans will be able to receive the benefits they deserve in a timely manner after swearing to serve and protect our country.
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