A Los Angeles office for the Department of Veterans Affairs improperly paid nearly $500,000 to 14 veterans, according to a report from the VA inspector general released Wednesday.
Staff members at the Los Angeles VA regional office (VARO) improperly processed 24 of a sample of 90 disability claims dating back to December 2005, resulting in the 347 improper monthly payments totaling about $499,976.
The Los Angeles office is the same VA facility that was caught shredding mail from veterans related to their disability claims. A separate inspector general report was released substantiating those allegations in August.
The disability claims analyzed by the inspector general were those that posed "increased risk of processing errors," the report said, and thus the share of incorrectly processed claims does not necessarily represent the overall processing accuracy of the VA office.
The inspector general concluded that the VARO staff had particular trouble processing temporary 100 percent disability evaluations. A veteran is typically granted a temporary 100 percent disability rating when recovering from surgery or other immobilizing trauma.
According to the report, the Los Angeles office wrongly processed 13 out of 30 of these evaluations, or nearly 50 percent.
"Effective management of these temporary 100 percent disability ratings can reduce [the Veteran Benefits Administration’s] risks of paying inaccurate financial benefits and provide improved stewardship of taxpayer funds," the report said.
"Available evidence showed 8 of 13 processing errors affected benefits and resulted in 250 improper monthly payments to 8 veterans totaling approximately $452,406."
Additionally, VARO staff incorrectly processed 7 out of 30 claims related to traumatic brain injury and 4 out of 30 claims for special monthly compensation, a benefit that provides a higher rate of compensation to veterans and their families due to limb loss or other special circumstances.
The incorrectly processed traumatic brain injury claims were a "result of a lack of training and management oversight," the inspector general concluded. Staffers were provided no training regarding these claims in fiscal year 2014. The office also lacks a process by which it can assess how effectively training, which was eventually conducted in January 2015, prepares staff to deal with these claims.
Likewise, the errors with special monthly compensation claims also occurred "due to a lack of training." In fact, no training has been recently conducted with employees.
A few cases also indicated that the facility failed to complete benefits reductions in a timely manner and also recorded incorrect claim dates in the VA’s electronic claims system. The latter resulted because "management prioritized other workload higher," the report said.
The inspector general recommended the VA facility analyze the rest of the temporary 100 percent disability evaluations in its system, which amount to 522 claims since December 2014.
Additionally, the inspector general directed the office to provide training to its staff on claims related to traumatic brain injury and special monthly compensation.
This report on the Los Angeles facility comes just over one month after the inspector general released a document on the "unannounced inspection" at the VA office. The visit, which also produced the findings in the newer report, exposed staffers who were sending mail related to veterans’ disability claims to the shredder.
The Los Angeles office is one of multiple VA facilities that have been caught manipulating or disposing of claims.
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs failed to meet its self-imposed deadline Thursday to reduce the backlog of disability claims to zero. VA official Allison Hickey has suggested that the agency will never eliminate the backlog of its oldest claims.