Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Home, injured and waiting: The backlog of veterans disabilities claims takes a toll

Excerpt from: Penn Live (click for full article)

 

Mona Johnson developed a chronic lung condition while serving in the Army during Desert Storm.

Her lung function is so compromised she is unable to walk and talk at the same time, and if she climbs a flight of stairs, she has to pause a few minutes to catch her breath at the top.

Intent on getting the recompence promised to her when she enlisted, Johnson filed a disability claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

That was two years ago.

Since then, the Susquehanna Twp. resident has been negotiating a system plagued with one of them most chronic backlogs of any federal agency.

“What other agency do you know that takes this long just to process claims?” Johnson said.

Nearly a million veterans have disability claims pending with Veterans Affairs. About 70 percent of those claims are 125 days or older. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America claim that on average, veterans wait 273 days - or about nine months - for benefits. Copious other reports citing considerably longer waits, in some cases, upwards of five years, have prompted a bipartisan call in Washington for reform.

Indiana panel OKs $5.7M renovation for Indiana Veterans' Home

Excerpt from: jconline.com (click for full article)

 

The Indiana State Budget Committee has approved a $5.7 million renovation for one of the main buildings at Indiana Veterans’ Home.

 The money will be used to fully renovate three patient care floors in the West Lafayette facility’s MacArthur Hall, which was built in 1982.

Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Buck Creek, who serves on the budget committee, said the infusion of money into the state’s only long-term care facility for veterans comes at a time when many veterans programs nationally are struggling with budget cuts.

“Indiana’s fiscal responsibility means we’re in a position to better fund care for these men and women who sacrifice so much in the defense of our country,” he said. “The Indiana Veterans’ Home is vital to so many Hoosiers and their families, and I’m happy to see it will receive the financial support it needs.”

Department of Veterans Affairs Unveils Its Online Veterans Employment Toolkit

Excerpt from: Southeast ADA Center (click for full article)

 

The Department of Veterans Affairs has released an online Veterans Employment Toolkit aimed at helping employers, managers and supervisors, human resource professionals, and employee assistance program providers support employees who are Veterans or members of the Reserve or National Guard to increase Veterans' retention of employment and facilitate their success in the workplace. The online toolkit provides information about the value Veterans bring to the workplace, material describing the military experience and culture, common challenges Veterans may experience in readjusting to civilian life, and how to support individuals in that transition.

The toolkit also addresses how to offer help to Veterans with disabilities including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The Veterans Employment Toolkit also includes resources for Veterans who want to obtain employment, learn how to make important career decisions, and excel in the workplace.

VA addressing gravesite issues that haunted national cemetery system

Excerpt from: The Washington Post (click for full article)

 

The National Cemetery Administration is making progress digging its way out of trouble from a 2011 internal investigation that found 15 sets of remains in the wrong spots and scores of mismarked, unmarked and sunken headstones, according to agency watchdogs.

Veterans Affairs Assistant Inspector General Linda A. Halliday testified before a House subcommittee on Wednesday that the NCA revised its review methods and caught onto more than 100 mistakes it had missed during its initial examination of the nationwide cemetery system.

Evidence of system-wide problems surfaced in 2011 after workers tested new maps at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, where investigators found 47 markers offset by one space from their correct spots.The mistakes prompted VA undersecretary Steve L. Muro to apologize to affected families.

A 2012 inspector general’s audit found that VA officials “did not provide adequate time and resources” for certifying gravesite accuracy during a subsequent review and that cemetery directors felt overwhelmed by pressure to meet the agency’s deadline.

Older VA disability claims to get top attention

Excerpt from: The Washington Post (click for full article)

 

Veterans waiting more than a year for a decision on their disability claims are moving to the front of the line, under a new program announced Friday.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is responding to criticism about the soaring number of claims that have been pending for longer than 125 days. The agency said that of the nearly 900,000 claims pending, some 250,000 are from veterans who have been waiting at least a year for a decision.

Veterans receive disability compensation for injuries and illness incurred or aggravated during their active military service. The amount of the compensation is based on a rating assigned by the department.

White House, Veterans Affairs pledge to fix disability claims process

Excerpt from: Detroit Free Press (click for full article)

 

The White House and the Department of Veterans Affairs say they are pushing hard to speed up the slow and cumbersome disability claims process and that a recent overhaul to the system should start to yield benefits soon.

The fiscal 2014 budget, to be released this week, will support those efforts, with increases to the VA division that processes veterans' claims for disability compensation, as well as a boost in mental health care services.

The administration also wants to make permanent tax credits to employers that hire veterans, the White House said in a briefing last week.

Why Veterans' Advocates Don't Like Chained CPI

Excerpt from: Forbes (click for full article)

 

Like many things on Capitol Hill, the “chained” Consumer Price Index (CPI) is not sexy enough to grab the public’s attention but it involves how billions of dollars are spent.

This budget proposal aims to control Social Security expenditures by calculating cost of living adjustments (COLA) in a way that proponents argue is a more accurate reflection of how prices for consumer goods fluctuate.

Those in favor of a chained CPI argue that the current index, which considers the spending habits of urban wage earners and clerical workers, is outdated. In its place, a chained CPI would calculate inflation more conservatively, and thus, yield significant COLA savings. Over a 10-year period, according to the Congressional Budget Office, such a measure would decrease the deficit by $340 billion.

Brain-injury survivors, including war and sports victims, are honored in exhibit

Excerpt from: The Washington Post (click for full article)

 

Hemorrhages, blunt-force trauma and bullet wounds don’t exactly scream “art.” But in a new exhibit, the National Museum of Health and Medicine is honoring men and women who survived such traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

The temporary exhibit — titled “Whack’ed . . . and then everything was different” — expands on the museum’s standing TBI installation, which showcases human brain specimens as well as medical tools used for surgery, treatment and rehabilitation. Artist and TBI survivor Eliette Markhbein created the larger-than-life portrait series to raise awareness of TBIs.

Taking brain injuries from the battlefield to the classroom

Excerpt from: KOSU (click for full article)

 

TBI isn’t a new injury, and it’s not unique to recent wars. But many experts believe that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, with their blurred front lines and improvised explosive devices, have particular harm to the brains of the people fighting in them.

“These wars are different from, say, World War II,” says David Hovda, Director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. “In Iraq and Afghanistan, you could be walking down any street and have somebody blow up an IED or a car and the explosive that’s being used is so powerful, it’s a devastating way to be exposed to an injury.”

Just how many veterans have a traumatic brain injury is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Estimates vary widely; the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center says almost 270,000 traumatic brain injuries have been diagnosed in service members between 2000 and 2012 — most of which are not deployment-related – and a report from the Rand Corporation suggests that almost 20 percent of service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan say they experienced a traumatic brain injury during deployment.

Veterans Affairs Officials Offer Reassurance About Troubled Hospital

Excerpt from: The New York Times (click for full article)

 

Senior officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs said on Wednesday that they have begun taking steps to fix problems at an embattled veterans medical center here, including hiring new senior leadership, adding primary care doctors and reviewing X-rays and CT scans that might have been misread several years ago.

“There’s been some negative publicity,” Joe D. Battle, the medical center director, said during a public meeting called after recent reports of problems at the hospital. “We’re working to change that.”

But his and other officials’ assurances did not go over well with some of the veterans in the packed auditorium near the Capitol here, drawing skeptical questions and a few catcalls.