The VA backlog for veterans disability benefits is being reported on frequently. Frustrating to many veterans and their families is how long can they wait for veterans disability compensation to arrive. The Washington Post has reported that this year great strides have been made in reducing the backlog, but still there are 816,000 pending claims with 540,000 pending for more than 125 days. Impressive promises have been made by the VA including virtually eliminating pending claims that are older than 125 days with a 98% accuracy rate, but such improvements won’t occur until 2015. Most interesting is how they can make promises in terms of accuracy of claim processing or what they even means. Federal Radio News reports that reductions in the backlog for new claims have made the appeal process and the Board of Veterans of Appeals more lengthy. In 2013 the Board of Veterans Appeals or simply “the board”, has already seen 37,000. It expects the number to climb to 54,000 and perhaps up to 100,000 by four years from now.
Many Veteran’s advocates and our office have seen huge waiting times in terms of getting a decision from the Board, and basically amounts to several years or 1,040 days. Many veterans ask if a Veterans Disability attorney can help speed up the process and usually my honest answer is that sadly we cannot. We at least can answer basic questions here. The veterans disability appeals process is significant in terms of the amount of additional time it adds to the veterans disability appeal. This is the length of time it takes from the time the appeal is filed until the board furnishes a decision. Reasons cited for the wait are that the board still relies on paper which significantly increases claims processing times. Hopefully there will be renewed efforts to decrease waiting times for disability appeals.
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