Plan Announced to End Compensation Claims Backlog

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- The wait is over; that's the bottom line for veterans who have not received compensation for their claims.

The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, was in Huntington Thursday afternoon announcing a speedier process of getting veterans who have waited one year or longer for their compensation.

"Those here in West Virginia wait too long to receive benefits they've earned and that has never been acceptable and that's why we have implemented a robust plan to fix a decades old problem," said Shinseki.

Paper claims have been creating a backlog of unsettled claims so the data will be processed electronically through a system called Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS). This system is already in place in Huntington but will be activated in all 56 regional offices by the end of 2013. The goal is to completely eliminate the backlog by 2015.

In the past four years, Veterans Affairs processed more than 4 million paper claims but took in an additional 4.6 million claims through better training, electronic data systems and revamping business processes.