Although the federal Veterans Administration has been taking heat nationally for a growing backlog and increased times to process disabled veterans benefits, the office in VA Secretary Eric Shinseki’s home state of Hawaii has been doing particularly poorly in processing claims in a timely manner.

And despite promises to improve its performance, agency data examined by Civil Beat, shows that in the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Honolulu office, veterans are waiting months longer and the backlog of disability claims has gotten significantly worse than a year ago.

In January, the latest period for which figures were available, 70 percent of compensation disability claims nationally had been pending longer than the goal of 125 days. That’s brought protests from veterans groups and criticism from Congress. However, the backlog was worse in the Honolulu office, where 77 percent of those claims had been pending longer than the 125 days.

The backlog of cases in Honolulu has grown since January 2012, when 69.4 percent of similar claims had been pending for that long.

It was also taking longer in the Honolulu office than the average nationally to process disability claims that require an assessment of the severity of a disability. Nationally, it took the VA an average of 279 days to complete such claims. It the Honolulu office, it took almost four months longer — an average of 390.2 days.

A year earlier, it took an average of 254 days to process a claim in the Honolulu office. In other words, it is now taking about five months longer on average to make even an initial determination of disability than a year ago.

The VBA’s figures showed that the Honolulu office was performing better than some other offices. Salt Lake, Oakland, Los Angeles, Reno, Chicago and Baltimore all had backlogs of about 82 percent. The average processing time for claims was 500 days in Los Angeles and 474 days in Reno, for example.

But other offices near military installations had smaller backlogs and shorter processing times than Honolulu, where military facilities are easily accessible to most of the state’s veterans. The average processing time in Seattle, for instance, was 322 days, more than two months shorter than Honolulu. In San Diego, it took on average 337 days to process a claim.

“It makes me furious,” said Diane Haar, a Honolulu attorney who specializes in veterans benefit cases.

She said her husband, a retired Air Force medic, was forced to wait about a year before finding out if he was approved for disability for a variety of knee, shoulder, wrist and back injuries he suffered at least in part during his deployment to Iraq.

“It seems like the least they can do is handle their benefits properly,” she said. “It’s not just my husband, it’s everybody I work with. They feel really betrayed.”

Haar said the tight economy makes things worse. “These guys really need their benefits. As you know, Hawaii’s really expensive. They go check their mailbox every day. As the clock ticks on and the wait gets longer and longer, and as much as they’ve sacrificed, they’re furious.”

According to the VBA, about 92 percent of those on the nation’s backlog are veterans who served during times of war.

And the situation might be worse for disabled veterans just returning from war.

Problem For Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Appears Worse

A March 11 report by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting noted that the 270-day average is the length of time it takes the DVA to make an initial determination for all types of veterans nationally. But veterans nationally filing their first claim — including those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan – have to wait on average nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days.

Civil Beat requested data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees the VBA, for the length of time it takes to process first-time claims in the Honolulu office. After nearly two weeks, the VA has not released the information.

The VA, however, did release the average processing times for all claims in the Honolulu office. That information showed that in addition to the growing backlog and the increased processing times, veterans applying for benefits in the Honolulu office have been waiting months longer than the national average.

It was also taking longer for disabled veterans in Honolulu to get decisions about qualifying for vocational rehabilitation benefits, which include services to help people get a job, or if the disability is significant enough, to get help to be able to live independently.

In January, it took veterans in Honolulu an average of 67.5 days to get a decision from the VA about whether they qualify for vocational rehabilitation, 22 more days than the national average of 45.1 days.

The situation had also gotten worse than the previous year, when it took just 36.6 days on average to get a decision. Last year, in fact, the Honolulu office had actually been doing a better job than the national average of 46.6 days.

The backlog and slow processing times have angered veterans. On March 20, members of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America delivered a petition signed by more than 36,000 Americans demanding an end to the backlog. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a National Guard veteran, was among those who attended a rally by the organization outside the Capitol.

“The backlog of veteran disability claims is a national crisis,” Gabbard said in an email to Civil Beat. “In Hawaii, our veterans face even longer delays than the national average and can sometimes wait several years to be approved for care, rehabilitation, or job training assistance.

“This is unacceptable. We must do a better job serving our veterans from every generation. They have made tremendous personal sacrifices for our country.”

Gabbard noted that, having been at war now for more than 12 years, the number of veterans needing help is growing.

“All options need to be on the table,” she said, “including a transition to paperless claims and mandating electronic health records for the VA and Department of Defense. Inefficiencies and redundancies are negatively impacting service members and veterans. Robust systems need to be in place to service returning service members who are entering the VA system for the first time, as well as a recognition of the unique challenges our National Guard and Reserve veterans face.”

Honolulu Office’s Progress Gets Mixed Reviews

According to the VBA data, the Honolulu office made strides in making sure their assessments of whether to accept or reject claims are accurate. About 94 percent of its assessments in the previous 12 months were accurate, higher than the national average of 92 percent.

It was markedly better than the 76.7 percent accuracy rate reported in a December 2011 report by the Office of the Inspector General. That report found the Honolulu office “faces a number of management challenges” and noted that in September 2011, the VBA’s Western Area office had to assign a mentor to the Honolulu management team.

“The mentor reported to the Western Area Director, that the management team needed to improve communication with (the director of the Veterans Affairs regional director) and provide clearer direction to its staff.”

The OIG report also said “the mentor noted that the supervisory staff were new, inexperienced, and needed routine supervisory training.”

Staff complained communications from supervisors were not always clear or consistent and they learned of new guidance or practices from other employees rather than from their supervisors. The report noted at the time that the three supervisors at the Honolulu VA regional office had an average of one year of supervisory experience and only one of them had received formal supervisory training.

The 2011 report did not take issue with processing times, noting that at the time it took an average of 216 days to process claims, 14 days faster than the national goal.

It was unclear what part increased accuracy played in an average time that was in January 174 days longer than the time reported a little more than a year earlier.

VA officials both in Washington, D.C. and Honolulu did not respond to questions this week, saying they were awaiting responses from the VBA.

“I don’t think it’s the individuals. The system seems overwhelmed, but I don’t know if there’s not enough personnel, or if it’s not organized properly,” said Stephen Hillenbrand, the disabled former medic who is married to Haar.

Haar was unsure why the Honolulu office was faring worse, saying she has seen individual cases worse than the average. “In some cases, it’s been over a year, a year-and-a-half and we’re still waiting. Some claims, it seems like they haven’t even begun processing after a year, like they’ve been sitting in a pile.”

“I don’t see anything over there that’s functioning all that well,” she said.

In some cases, Haar said she’s gone to the VA offices to check on an appeal filed for the denial of benefits and found it hadn’t even been logged into the system. “In their world, if it hasn’t been logged in, there’s basically no appeal.”

Complex Reasons Cited

But in testimony before Congress and in a critical General Accounting Office report in March, VA officials said that at least nationally, a number of complex factors have contributed to the backlog.

Perhaps chief among them is the growing number of injured veterans as America fights two wars. In addition, the GAO report noted that in October 2010, the VA added three more diseases associated with Agent Orange exposure to the list of covered conditions. That forced the VA to reexamine 260,000 previously denied and new claims.

The GAO report said the VA gave these claims high priority and assigned experienced staff to process them. In fact, VBA officials said 37 percent of claims processing staff nationally were devoted to processing Agent Orange claims from October 2010 to March 2012.

“VBA officials in one regional office we spoke to said that all claims processing staff were
assigned solely to developing and rating Agent Orange claims for four months in 2011, and that no other new and pending claims in the regional office’s inventory were processed during that time,” said the GAO report.

Honolulu staff were not interviewed by GAO investigators for the report.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 13, Allison Hickey, the VA’s Under Secretary for Benefits, said the VBA completed more than 1 million claims in each of fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012. But the VBA received 1.2 million claims in 2010, another 1.3 million claims in 2011, and 1.08 million claims in 2012.

“The increased productivity in claims processing was not enough to keep pace with the number of claims received in several of those years,” she said, acknowledging that the during last three years, the claims backlog has grown nationally from 180,000 to 600,000 claims.

According to Hickey, the largest number of claims comes from Vietnam-era veterans, who make up 37 percent of the inventory and 38 percent of the backlog. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts make up 20 percent of claims and 22 percent of the backlog.

Gulf War Era Veterans make up 23 percent of claims and 22 percent of the backlog. Veterans of the Korean War and World War II and all others make up less than 10 percent of both claims and backlog. The remainder is from peacetime veterans.

Testifying at the same hearing, Bart Stichman, joint executive director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, was sympathetic to the VA’s dilemma.

The Legal Services Program had filed a suit on behalf of Vietnam War veterans that led to the VA agreeing to continually assess scientific findings on the long-term effects of Agent Orange and add them to the list of covered conditions.

“So,” Stichman said, “it was in 2010, when Secretary Shinseki was simultaneously faced with a growing backlog of VA claims, due in part to the increasing number of claims being filed by veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the conclusion of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in its latest report under the Agent Orange Act of 1991 to place three new diseases — ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, and chronic B-cell leukemia — in the same category of association with Agent Orange exposure.”

Stichman testified that Shinseki actually deserves praise. “Secretary Shinseki knew that if he agreed as a result of the latest NAS report to add these three new diseases to the list of diseases … VA adjudicators would be required … to redecide more than 150,000 past claims for these three diseases – at the exact same time that these same adjudicators were faced with the growing backlog of other claims.

Stichman called Shinkseki’s action “a courageous decision that gave appropriate recognition to both the scientific evidence and the service and needs of hundreds of thousands of disabled Vietnam veterans who risked harm to themselves in serving their country in Vietnam.”

Neither the VA’s Washington, D.C., office nor Honolulu office responded when asked whether the growing caseload from the wars or additional Agent Orange-associated diseases played a factor in the slowing processing times.

Additionally, the GAO report said new laws passed by Congress have also slowed processing. For example, the Veterans Claims Assistance Act of 2000 (VCAA) added a requirement that the VBA assist veterans filing claims by obtaining evidence, including all relevant federal documents, to substantiate the claim before making a decision. And, the VA is required to pursue federal records, such as VA medical records, military service records, and Social Security records, until they are either obtained or it’s found they do not exist.

The high number of National Guard and Reserve members involved in the recent conflicts has also made processing claims more difficult, the GAO report found. Military records of National Guard or Reserve members can often be difficult to obtain, the GAO report noted, in particular, because these service members typically have multiple, non-consecutive deployments with different units. Their records may exist in multiple places, including with private providers they saw in between tours of duty, the report said.

Additionally, the VA’s paper-based system can lead to misplaced or lost documents, also adding to lengthy processing times. The report noted, “VBA officials at one regional office said that claims might be stalled in the evidence-gathering phase if mail that contains outstanding evidence is misplaced or lost. In addition, claims staff may rate a claim without knowledge of the additional evidence submitted and then, once the mail is routed to the claim folder, have to re-rate the claim in light of the new evidence received.”

Hoping to speed claims, the Department of Defense agreed earlier this year to compile and validate applicants’ service records and ship them to VA. The defense department also said it would speed creating the ability to send records electronically by the end of the year. Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, along with other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote Defense Secretary Charles Hagel on March 25 asking him to make sure it happens.

In a statement, Hawai Sen. Brian Schatz said, “Our disabled veterans have sacrificed their lives for this country and it’s only right for them to receive full compensation that they deserve without delay. The GAO report is extremely troubling and my staff will work with the local VA on ways to remedy the situation because this backlog is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

VA Says New ‘Express Lane’ Will Help

In her testimony, Hickey said the VA is taking a number of steps to meet Shinseki’s goal of processing claims within 125 days by 2015, including the development of a computer system. It is due to be completed in all regional offices by the end of the year.

Hickey said the VA has created new systems in which less complicated claims that can be processed quickly are sent through an “express lane.” The new system is due to be in place in all regional offices by the end of March.

Hickey said also that employees are being given additional training that have increased their accuracy and productivity, and is implementing the training at lower performing regional offices. It was unknown if the Honolulu office is one of the “lower-performing” offices.

For all the complaints, many veterans organizations have generally been sympathetic to the VA. At the March 13 hearing, Joseph Violante, national legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, said his organization “believes that VBA is on the right path, that they have set the right goals and that they have leadership committed to transforming and institutionalizing a new claims processing system to better serve veterans.”

But those steps are little help to those stuck in the backlog. “It’s unfortunate because they’re the ones taking care of our vets and I’m one of them,” Stephen Hillenbrand, the former medic, said.

The more than a year it took to hear if he qualified for benefits was frustrating. Besides the additional money, he was hoping to get a job consulting with Hawaii hospitals for terrorism readiness. The position gave preference to disabled veterans, and he needed certification from the VBA.

Hillenbrand was one of the lucky ones. Though he has had multiple surgeries for muscle and nerve damage suffered lugging heavy equipment during his time in Baghdad, he is able to work. The benefits for him mean largely a tax savings and some extra cash.

For others, it’s a main source of income.

“You kind of sit on pins and needles,” he said of waiting. The process was less than supporting. “The examination was almost accusatory. ‘Why are you trying to claim all of this?’ It felt like (applying for benefits) was almost frowned upon from the beginning.”

Hillenbrand is contesting the denial of some of his claims — a process that’s taken almost another two years.

“I did 25 years in the military. When I got out, the message was ‘we’ll take care of you,'” Hillenbrand said. “I feel like there were broken promises when you serve your country and risk your life. I think the whole thing is kind of disingenuous.”