Subcommittee, and im grateful to chairman row for the opportunity. I want to explain that although working withd to our new Ranking Member from connecticut, under committee ises, ms. Julia brownley still the subcommittees acting Ranking Member. My understanding is the full committee will schedule a business meeting to formalize the subcommittee assignment and our new subcommittee Ranking Members soon, but since we have to see ifat, i need we have also we also need to make sure that we know we have been joined by the ranking walsh, mr. Tim walz and thank him for being here. I would like to ask that he be andwed to sit at the dais ask questions and also that ms. Esty be allowed to serve as Ranking Member pending her affirmation. By way of short introduction, this is my second term in congress on this subcommittee. I am a father of three and a grandfather of 11, and before coming to congress, i worked in small business, a trucking business, and my wife and i now own a beauty salon with a firefighter and state representative with over 20 years in the state of illinois. Im also honored to say that my family has a tradition of service. Im not only a murray and, im a marine and a father of a marine. Im enlisted, and he is an forcer, so it kind of makes unique conversation around our home. The House Veterans Affairs committee is known for working in a bipartisan manner for making sure that the department of Veterans Affairs provides our former military members with the best service possible. Our nations heroes deserve no less. The subcommittee specifically addresses how to best provide for the needs of veterans who have medical conditions relating to their service. We also Work Together to ensure that veterans who have asked are treated with dignity and respect. I look forward to continuing this tradition and with working members of thend subcommittee on issues that are critically important to the veterans and our nation as a whole. The first meeting of the subcommittee oversight hearing will focus on how or the nwqrk q o has impacted the ability to process claims. Before it, the practice was to process claims that the Region Office and state where the veteran lived. The challenge is that some Regional Offices had large in those and veterans states were often left in limbo. The Regional Offices in other states would have been able to process claims faster because of not being so busy. Is supposed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency by automatically assigning the claim to the Regional Office with the most capacity. On its face, this is a commonsense idea. It allows the v. A. To distribute its workload evenly across the , but there are some concerns about if it is actually performing as it should. Unfortunately, the v. A. Claims backlogs have increased from about 76,000 claims on may 2, 2016 before it was fully up limited to now as of february 4 101,000. One has to question if the disbursement distribution work is in fact more effective. Than assigning a claim to a specific employee to work the entire claim, the nwq breaks up the claim into different tasks. After one claim, the processor reviews a file and completes an action, it will likely assign another claim processor for the next step. The second claim processor also has to become familiar with the file to determine if additional action is needed for the v. A. To make it decision. Ondoes not make sense to me how having multiple claim process is completely review the same file can possibly save time. We will hear from our second panel as well comprised of Veterans Service organizations. They used to receive an advanced ratings decisions before it was sent to the veteran. This practice gave 48 hours to review a proposed decision and raise objections before a decision was finalized, but now, q has been deployed, they complain they no longer have a chance to review a decision and try to resolve errors before any incorrect decision is sent to the veteran. I hope the v. A. Will explain what steps it is taking to decisions are accurate. Im also looking forward to learning more about how the v. A. Intends to monitor employee production and quality standards has beenthe nwq limited. I also hope the v. A. Will tell us more about what the department intends to do to tackle the current backlog of appeals and how it plans to to do so. Wq again, i want to thank the witnesses for being here today and with that, i want to call on the distinguished Ranking Member for her opening statement. Esty thank you very much, mr. Chairman, and i appreciate your warm welcome, and im delighted to join the committee. Im happy to be here is the Ranking Member designate, and i look forward to working with all of you to ensure that the veterans that we are honored to represent our receiving all the quality of care and the Rapid Service that they and their families deserve. A bit about my background i am in my third term in congress. I and the daughter of a navy man, daughterinlaw of air force, and my knees and nephew are army. So we need a marine. Were working on getting a marine in the next generation. My district in connecticut is proud home to over 40,000 veterans, a long service tradition. In my office, it is always issue number 1, 2, or three for constituent services. We have made it a core part of our mission. I hire veterans proudly in my office, and im committed to ensuring that everyone who serves this country is served in turn by all of us who enjoy the freedoms that they secured. I want to thank mr. Murphy and the deputies of the v. A. For appearing today to help us understand how the National Work to programs functioning now that it has been rolled out in all 56 Regional Offices. In speaking with connecticut veterans, its my impression that the claims have made progress and i went to congratulate all of you. You are providing assurance to veterans as they navigate the disability process. I thank you for your commitment to veterans and making sure things get done right. We are here for the same enjoy thee want to speed and accuracy of our nation but we want to make sure that personal touch is an short and our veterans are treated with that care. Forward to hearing from you today. How we get the best of both worlds, the hightech and the hightouch. Tonow everyone is committed getting us where we need to be and i look forward to the testimony and working together collaboratively. We have been joined by the current raking, my good friend, colleague and classmate and my work buddy. Thank you. I ask all members waiver the remark as per this committees custom. I welcome our first two panels. Thank you for taking the time to be here today. Our first witnesses mr. Thomas murphy, the acting under secretary for benefits. He is accompanied by mr. Willie clark. Undersecretary for Field Operations and mr. Ronald burke, assistant secretary, undersecretary Field Operations. Into the be entered hearing record. Mr. Murphy, you are recognized for five minutes. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the implementation of the the aelated to workload. It is designed to match claims and capabilities with me a capacity regardless of geographical boundary. This provides the means necessary to make sure veterans receive a more timely decision. It uses sophisticated capabilities for electronic claim inventory and models for and allows for efficiency and areas for improvement and this new environment allows the va the capability to move claims around the country and has the capacity to take the next step and assign work to the right person in each facility. One of the principals is doing is to ensure veterans are treated in goalie regardless to where they live. In 2015, in many instances the timeliness of the decision was impacted based solely on the state of which the veteran received lived. Some took more than 213 days, double the time of others. This variance demonstrates the inefficiency of the model where he each receives claims based on geography rather than capacity to complete work. The average and spending for veteran disability claims was 94 days. It was reduced to 84. A 10 reduction. Upon receipt of a claim, the v8 develops revenues. It was reduced from 56,000 to of januaryo the end 2017. The average number of days has dropped from almost 25 to less than 10 in 2017. Following the initial development actions, veterans way totration develops a related. It has dropped from 29 days to 16 days. Once a rating decision is report is prepared. It has dropped from eight days to four days. The Veterans Administration continues to work on reducing the time. Weird knowledge some claims will take longer but we have made improvements. As of january 2017, 66 were completed within 125 days. In was a component and one the vllows the v8 v. A. Features, weese can now measure feedback from employees. Approximately 6500 claims returned for been correction. Systematically tracking errors and enables us to increase accountability in the claims process. Large, theeavor this va efforts had a myriad of calls and briefings. New levels and created standard reports. Additionally, it brought 1001 hundred than 64 supervisors for training on tools and breast part best practices. The feedback was taken to heart. We acknowledge there is more work to be done but it is important to recognize these efforts have been continue to generate positive results for myerans this concludes statement. Pleased to answer any questions. Thank you. I would like to yield five minutes for questions. And w q was fully implemented, there were over 76,000 backlogged claims. Yet last week there were more 100,000 claims. The increase is about dirty assertion the is about 30 percent. Does the v. A. Think it is improving . Yes. We have the ability to look at what needs to be worked. Today in the work we are sending out every claim it every single day and working back to the earliest claims. Ability toraging the see what needs to be done and sending it out at the right time. See, whatat we can specific factors are contributing to that increase. That all of usrn want to see a process as soon as possible. What would be agency say the reasons are for that. Good morning. It is my pleasure to respond. The first thing i would like to say is our receipts have gone up since last year. One of the things we know it is as we get more efficient and more veterans are aware of what is available to them, they come in and submit more claims. We are taking a more balanced approach to the work we are doing. One of the things we have done in the past and we did great backlog downng the in past years, we focused probably too much on the backlog. We have this old saying in the v. A. That if you work only the thelog than only you work backlog. So we have improved in answering phones. Ofhad a blocked call rate 60 a couple years ago and now we are right 0 blocked calls. Not great, dependency claims, we have claims we are working. Are doing is taking a more balanced approach but we do understand. We do keep an eye on our backlog to make sure we dont have veterans waiting to look. That would be the concern. Another part of my question is what claims to have we should not work up the backlog. I agree with that alone. But that is still a major factor we can use to say, ok, how quick are we getting these process through. I am sure it is a concern when you see this pileup. What do we see out there we can do to speed the process up . That one. Take about six months ago i took a look at where we were spending money in terms of overtime dollars and a number of people we had, the number of vacancies. Authorized and strength. If you look at it today, the hiring freeze, we have 200 50 people above authorized headcount. Dollarsi cost over time and we converted it into fulltime labor. It takes about one year to get a bsr up to speed. Two years for ian r svr. Better processing, more leaders in place within next six months. , and i will concern finish quickly because my time is running out, the concern i have is relative then one person dealing with a particular claim in having it handed off over and over again, it can cause confusion. My concern, and you have that same concern that maybe one person is not focusing on one claim and by passing through multiple hands, do you see a problem with that . I will ask why into time about this one. I have been concerned that the changes we made was much smaller than it was. Mr. Chairman, thank you for t question and simplify semper fi. Were still learning. We wanted to make sure our claims distribution was much too capacity. As we get more data from the end of week you system we are ways to optimize. One of the things were going to do is maximize the amount of work that goes to the home station. We believe it will do several things. It will most likely a sign a claim back to an employee that has seen a before and as one of two former on the panel to hand one of three veterans, we also received that stakeholder vsos. K from our we have heard that feedback. We have created a request that will allow us to almost reverse the amount of claims of being assigned to the same station. We hope that will help. Real quickly if you can, because i know my time is expired, how many on average handleou think employees one claim as it processes through under the existing system . When i can tell you sir right now is that the amount of work being assigned to the home station is about 3035 of each daily distribution. With the march release, we believe that will allow us to increase it to about 50 , maybe as high as the mid50s. That will at least reduce the amount of instances where employees are seeing the same. You have an average of how many people touch claims as they go through . The certain, it depends on claimants up. 3, 6, 8 . Normally, five or six touches from initial development to completion to begin with. We would like to add that number to the record will stop i would like to turn it over to the Ranking Member. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you all for your service and commitment to Work Together with us to serve veterans better. I want to pick up where they chairman left off on this issue of ownership. I have a lot of manufacturing territory. N my i am the granddaughter of a manufacturer. This depends on ownership. Not ownership. N in so, think we need to figure at how we ensure we are reducing the number of touches. Have very complex claims into those require and should go to the people best able to do specializedre are claims we know are much more fairly and rapidly processed in specialized settings but i think we do need to work for the typical claim to keep a closer to home. Engaged. Vsos reduce the number of touches we need to 11 so if you could talk in a little bit in addition, mr. Burr, about in march issuing a directive to reduce that number nro more so it stays in the s. So what are you hearing that will just not reduce the a time improve the engagement necessary to keep our veterans feeling served as well is being served. Thank you for that question. Let me start with the latest part of your question about quality. One of the things were all building into our processes and automating is the diagnostic tool. This is purely based to improve and focus on the quality of our claims processing at all steps. This is an automated feature that will run in the background as an employee is processing a claim and before the claim boost to the next step, the employee will have the opportunity to have a diagnostic check and it is designed to catch some of the major trend we see now with missed steps or confusion in the claims process. We believe that will help. I am actually leading an endeavor to we bring 1100 and we are still in this process ringing 1100 of our division processors and chiefs to eight location for trading. This is to talk about trends, new reports, and we have created a standard suite of report so our supervisors can lead better. They can see issues with the claims process. On the issue of ownership, what we are stressing the importance of is that we have to treat this National Work queue environment like an ecosystem. Every action we take on a veterans claim has a subsequent reaction. We are stressing we want pride in ownership from our employees in every action they take on a veterans claim whether it is the entire claim or pieces of the claim but to that point what we to routevalued need for work to local stations in what we have been doing since implementation. That feedback comes not only from our employees but from our dsl employees and other stakeholders. Thank you i want to follow up on the backlog. We are in a freeze right now. So lets be clear. The committee has been told that an hundred 60im vacancies. Mr. Murphy talked about how you are redirecting money to try to more appropriately try to cover. It you still have those they can seize. It is our understanding those will not be exempted from the hiring ban at this point so when you are looking at the final role of establishing a new related to diseases contaminated water at camp lejeune, that will affect march 14. You will see intake go up obviously. We have vacancies. You talk a little bit about what you expect to happen to backlog when those cases come online . This are overstaffed at time. The intent right up front six months ago was where one to hire ahead because we always have 1000 positions vacant. We authorized the strength 100 . Waiting for a vacancy, starting the fill presses, 45 months later in person would show up and start training. I bumped up across the nation for5 and told everybody you could hire up to one hundred 5 . They followed the normal procedure which took them to 100 . We spent 130 million last year on overtime. Overtime is very expensive. Why not convert some of that to permanent employees and keep the rest of this overtime and use the overtime money for so just we have. So in addition to the 105 , we converted the 50 of overtime dollars to higher individuals and those folks now are working through our challenge process today. So again, i am 250 bodies over our strength for the president ial budget. We lose approximately 140 people ap. Now its so i could be ahead for the next three months because of the attrition rate impact. The next step as we start moving positions. Direct the delivery of service. Not a next her person at the headquarters. So we do have a hiring freeze in place, we also have a Movement Trees and place where people could not promoted into other positions which leaves me trying to figure