Jim,
i know you are busy and I don't want to take up your time. I'm 100% P&T for PTSD. I put in for aid and attendance. my Va doc wrote a nexus letter for me. My claim was a the rating broad but they pushed it back to development again? The Dav is my NSO's but the lady has not been working there for six weeks
Reply:
I don't know where you've been getting your information but it's not exactly correct. I'll guess you're anxious to hear about progress with your claim and that you're calling the toll free number or you're using the IRIS email system.
Every day I receive mail from veterans who tell me that they have been informed that their claim is either "at the rating board", "in development" or that it's in some other strange place in the process of adjudication...the decision making process.
When you call the toll free number (or email IRIS), your call is routed to a "call center". It doesn't always go to your Regional Office. The people who respond only have scant information about you on their computer screens. They may be able to tell that you have a claim in process but they don't see the claim itself. If the data they see has been updated, it may or may not be accurate, depending on what was updated and by who.
In general terms there is no accurate way to track your claim. Unlike UPS or FedEx, your claims folder isn't bar coded and efficiently entered into a database where you can easily tell what's happening. In any case, nobody who works in the many steps of processing that is involved is very concerned that you get that information. They spend their time trying to do the job of finalizing the decision for the claim you submitted.
If VA tried to accurately respond to the tens of thousands of daily requests that they receive from frustrated and angry veterans, they wouldn't have time to do anything else.
The people at the call center work on quotas. They're expected to answer a given number of phone calls each day. They have about 3 minutes to spend on each call. They don't have time to chat with you but they know you want to hear something so they tell you what you want to hear.
The terms above are pretty meaningless. From the moment a claim gets in the door it's "in development"...what else would it be? I have no real idea what the "rating board" is. Your claim is developed by a series of people and begins with an Veterans Service Representative (VSR) who collects data and assembles it to ensure that the folder is completed and then it goes to a Ratings Veterans Service Representative (RVSR or "rater") who will make a decision and notify you by letter.
Think of it this way: Your claim comes in and the paper is put in a folder. That is known as the Claims File or C-File. That folder is put in a long line of thousands of other folders. In the order they are received (more or less) each folder goes to a VSR and data needed (C&P exams, medical records, DD-214 and so on) are retrieved and accumulated in the folder. As that happens and each task is completed the folder is put back in the line of all the others and they will continue to march to the next destination, the RVSR.
That line outside of the RVSR's office may extend as far back as a city block. There may be dozens of RVSR's working in any Regional Office and each of them may have a backlog of hundreds or more files to work on.
A competent RVSR can close upwards of 4 claims folders each day. Depending on the complexity of the claim, that rater may be able to close only 1 on some days and more on others.
Your claim is in one of those very long lines. It isn't going to move faster because you need the money or for any other reason. Your claim may get priority if you're close to death but I hope that isn't the case for you.
Your representative really has no more of an idea of where your claim is at a given moment than anyone else does. The representatives who work for Veterans Service Organizations are usually too busy with new clients to have any thoughts of keeping track of your folder. Their days are full of the tens of thousands of veterans who are filing new claims every day.
There are about 1,000,000 claims that are backlogged today...long overdue for processing. Depending on who you speak to, those backlogged claims may be delayed by 120 days, 240 days or in my own estimation, 12 to 18 months.
Each day the Veterans Benefits Administration gets further behind. There are any number of factors that affect the backlog. VA says that there are simply more veterans filing than ever before and that decisions by the courts have made processing claims more complex than in years past.
In my own studied opinion, the BVA is its own worst enemy. They rush to process claims so that workers can earn bonuses that are based on the volume of claims processed but not on the quality of the outcomes of their work product. Those wrongful decisions are then appealed and cause more work..."rework". Any business person will quickly tell you that to have to routinely rework a product is time consuming and very expensive. The decision on your claim is a "product" and not different than a Toyota coming off the assembly line at a manufacturing facility.
Imagine if the Toyota company had to rework 70% of their products because the customers who received them had picked up vehicles that were broken? A recall of vehicles isn't much different than appealing claims that aren't accurate.
In the final analysis, not only is there no way to determine where you claim is today, I can safely predict that chances are good that when you do receive that decision letter, it won't be correct and you'll need to appeal.
I can only recommend that you don't waste your time trying to figure
it out. Wait patiently for the decision letter and then use the resources I've made available to you to prepare your appeals.