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FEDERAL MANAGER'S DAILY REPORT |
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The Veterans Benefits Administration does not have adequate operational controls to ensure that staff schedule or conduct disability reevaluations as necessary, though the agency is planning improvements to some controls, GAO has said. It said the claims processing software used by VBA, which completed about 17,700 reevaluations in fiscal 2005, does not automatically establish or prompt regional office staff to schedule a time – or "diary date" - to determine whether a disability reevaluation should proceed. One result is that some cases in need of a reevaluation may never get one, according to GAO-08-75, which is based on an analysis of VBA data, a review of federal regulations and VBA procedures, site visits and interviews with VBA officials. A diary date triggers a preliminary review of a claim file to see if a fuller reevaluation is needed. If not, reevaluations can be cancelled, but such cancellations are not tracked or subject to quality assurance reviews to ensure adherence to program policies and procedures, the report said. It said the agency plans to improve some control mechanisms through its claims management system, the Veterans Service Network, including developing the ability to track cancellations. However, VBA has no plans to include a prompt for scheduling reevaluation diary dates in VETSNET, according to GAO. It said VBA cannot effectively manage the disability reevaluation process because some of the data it collects are inconsistent and it does not systematically collect and analyze key management data. While the agency does collect data on the amount of time regional offices take to conduct disability reevaluations, regional offices use different starting points for measuring timeliness, leading to inconsistencies across regions, GAO said. It said VBA also does not know the types of disabilities being reevaluated, the length of time before reevaluations are conducted, or the results of the reevaluations, and as a result cannot ensure that it is effectively and appropriately using its resources. |
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