On the January afternoon Eric Shinseki took over as the nation’s seventh VA secretary, he inherited a mess. The backlog initially expanded as a result of VA raising its own standards. Let’s take a look at what the chart shows.ġ. The high-water mark for the backlog was in March 2013 at 608,000 claims. The red line represents the portion of those claims that is backlogged-meaning (since October 2009) that they’ve been in the system for more than 125 days. The moment a claim is received by the Department, it is included here. The blue line is all claims in the inventory-which peaked at 883,000 in July 2012.
This chart illustrates the inventory of pending VA disability claims since January 2009. Therefore, it’s important to understand where the backlog actually stands in relation to where it was-and to fully recognize its context.īy using a simple chart to show the backlog since the beginning of the Obama Administration, we can get past the agenda-specific rhetoric and the media misconceptions to see how-and why-the backlog grew and how it began to shrink. Barring any surprises, the decline in backlogged claims will only accelerate as an automated system finally replaces paper processing over the next two years. Nevertheless, the trend line is striking-and it mirrors what many VA employees are saying behind closed doors. To be sure, no one is yet measuring the drapes in a backlog-free department-as it still stands at more than 500,000 claims. The downward slope is now steeper than at any time during the Obama administration.
Last week, it too reached its lowest point since January 2012-nearly 17 months ago. Since late March, the backlog of claims has been on an eight-week slide as well.
Last week, the total number of claims in the inventory fell to slightly more than 830,000-the lowest number since October 2011. Follow with the Department of Veterans Affairs likely won’t acknowledge it publicly until later this year, but those responsible for processing disability claims believe the infamous “backlog” peaked more than two months ago.
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