Subcommittee of disability assistance and memorial affairs. Will now come to order. I first want to take a moment to welcome subcommittee members, especially those who are new to congress and new to the committee, and also those who are returning. Its my privilege to have been asked to be chairman of the subcommittee, and im grateful to chairman rowe for the opportunity. I want to explain that although i look forward to working with ms. Elizabeth essie from connecticut as our new Ranking Member. Ms. Julia brownley is still the subcommittees acting Ranking Member. My understanding is the full committee will schedule a business meeting to formalize familiarize formalize the subcommittee assignment and our new subcommittee Ranking Members soon. But since we have not got that, i need to see if we have also we also want to make sure that we know we have been joined by the Ranking Member, mr. Tim walsh, and thank him for being here. I want to ask unanimous consent for Ranking Member walsh, representative este, be allowed to sit at the dais and ask questions. And also ask unanimous consent that ms. Esty be allowed to serve as Ranking Member for this hearing pending or ratification for the full committee. No objections. So ordered. 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, in a trucking business, and my wife and i now a beauty salon. I was 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. I am not only a marine, im a marine and a father of a marine. Im enlisted, and he is an officer, so it kind of makes for unique conversation around our home. The House Veterans Affairs committee is known for working in a bipartisan manner for ensuring the department of Veterans Affairs provides our former military members with the best service possible. Our nations heroes deserve no less. This 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 passed away are treated with dignity and respect. I look forward to continuing this tradition and with working with ms. Esty and members of the subcommittee on issues that are critically important to the veterans and our nation as a whole. That said, the first meeting of the subcommittee oversight hearing of the 115th congress will focus on how National Work q or the nwq has impacted the ability to process disability claims. Before nwq, the practice was to process claims that the Region Office and state where the veteran lived. The challenge was that some Regional Offices had large backlogs, and veterans in those states were often left in limbo. Even if the Regional Offices in other states would have been able to process claims faster because of not being so busy. The nwq is supposed to increase effectiveness and efficiency by automatically assigning the claim to the Regional Office with the most capacity. On its face, this is a commonsense idea. The nwq allows the v. A. To distribute its workload evenly across the nation, 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 backlog claims on may 2, 2016 before the nwq was fully up limited to now as of february 4, 101,000. One has to question if the disbursement distribution work nwq is in the nwt fact more effective. Rather than assigning a claim to a specific employee to work the entire claim, the nwq breaks up the claim into different tasks. Such as scheduling a disability exam. After one claim, the processor reviews a file and completes an action. Nwq 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 a decision. It does not make sense to me on how having multiple claim processors completely review the same file can possibly save time. We will hear from our second panel as well. Its comprised of Veterans Service organizations. They used to receive an advanced copy of the ratings decisions before it was sent to the veteran. This practice gave vsos 48 hours to review a proposed decision and raise objections before a decision was finalized, but now, the nwq has been deployed. Vsos 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 s towith the the vso ensure v. A. Decisions are accurate. Im also looking forward to learning more about how the v. A. Intends to monitor employee production and quality standards now that the nwq has been implemented. 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 not rating claims and how it plans to leverage nwq to do so. 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. Ms. Est 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 have a niece and nephew who 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 3 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 served 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 q 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 backlog in our region have made progress and i went to congratulate all of you. However i want to deal with issues that remain and i look forward to working with you to improve the process Going Forward. To the witnesses here today in the thousands of sponsored veteran Service Representatives in every part of the country, youre providing, reassuring in dedicated assistance as they navigate the process. I thank you for your commitment to veterans and making sure things get done right. I know we are all here for the same purpose. We want to enjoy the benefits and speed and accuracy of automation. But we want to make sure that personal touch is an short and our veterans are treated with that care. I am looking forward to hearing from you today. How we get the best of both worlds, the hightech and the hightouch. I know that is our objective. I think we are in agreement with i know everyone is committed to getting us where we need to be and i look forward to the testimony and working together collaboratively. I see we have been joined by the current ranking my good friend, colleague and classmate , julia brownley. Thank you. I ask all members waiver the remark as per this committees custom. I would like to welcome our first of 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, deputy undersecretary for field operations. And mr. Ronald burke, assistant undersecretary for field operations. This will be entered into the hearing record. Mr. Murphy, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. Murphy good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the implementation of progress related to the the a. National work q it is designed to match claims and capabilities with me a capacity regardless of geographical boundary. This tool provides the means necessary to make sure veterans receive a more timely decision. Nwq 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 that have the capacity to take the next step and assign work to the right person. One of the present fundamentals is to ensure veterans are served equally regardless of where they live. It review of claims from 2015 in many instances the timeliness of a decision synthetically impacted based solely on the state of which the veteran received lived. Veteran lived. Some took more than 213 days, nearly double the time. This variance in variance demonstrates the inefficiency of the model where he each receives claims based on geography rather than what their capacity is to complete work. The average days pending for veteran disability claims was 94 days. It was reduced to 84 by 2017. A 10 reduction. Upon receipt of a claim, the v8 v. A. Develops revenues. It was reduced from 56,000 to 18,000 as to the end of january 2017. The number of days for first element action was dropped from almost 25 to less than 10 in 2017. Following the initial development actions, v. A. Develops a rating decision. It has dropped from 29 days to 16 days. Once a rigged decision is complete, v. A. Repairs prepares a report for the veteran as appropriate. It has dropped from 8 days to four days. V. A. Continues to work towards reducing the number of claims pending over 125 days. Being knowledge of some claims will take more than that but we have made significant improvements over the past fiscal years. In 2015, v. A. Completed 45 of its claims of an 125 days. As of january 2017, 66 were completed within 125 days. Q nwq allows v. A. To measure rework in system which is never been possible before. It allows any employee in the process to correct the deficiency. A process similar in other industries to ensure highquality. We can now measure feedback from employees. As a result of approximately 6500 claims reviewed have been returned to an earlier stage for correction. Systematically tracking errors enables us to tailor training and increase accountability in the claims process. With an endeavor this large, that the a a lot of time and resources on a measured changed management was approach. Reading various stakeholders, publication of a playbook and a myriad of calls and briefings of these Regional Office. They utilized the new data to revise director and employee Level Performance metrics and create standard reports used to improve workload management and effectively manage resources. Additionally ba is bringing more va. A. Brought together more than supervisors 100,000 for training on tools and 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 and continue to generate positive results for veterans this concludes my statement. I am pleased to answer any questions you are members of the committee may have. Thank you. I would like to yield five minutes for questions. On may 2, 2016 before the nwq was fully implement it, there were nearly backlogged claims. 76,000 yet last week there were more than 100,000 claims. The increase is about 30 . Is it the v. A. s assertion that yes. Mproving and processing claims. Yes. We have the ability to look at that 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. We are leveraging the ability to see the exact work case that needs to be done and sending it to original office for action at the right time. From what we can see, what specific factors are contributing to that increase that we see over the ninemonth period . We want to see the process as soon as possible. What were the agency say other reasons for that . I last mr. Clark to jump on that. Mr. Clark good morning and thank you for your chairman. It is certainly my pleasure to respond this morning. The first thing i would like to say is our receipts have gone up since last year. One of the things we know that as we get more efficient and more veterans are aware of the benefits that are available to them they come and incident more claims. Additionally 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 work in getting the backlog down in past years, but we focused probably too much on the backlog. We have this old saying in the v. A. If you work only the backlog , then only you work the backlog. So we have improved in answering phones. We had a block call rate of 60 a couple years ago and now we are right 0 blocked calls. Those types of claims, dependency claims, we had claims. We are working those claims. What we 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 long. That would be the concern. Another part of my question is what plans do you 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. It is concerning to us and im sure it is concerning to everyone involved when you see that continuing to pile up. What we see out there we can do to speed the process up . I will take that one, sir. 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 and the number of vacancies we carried. I went out to our top 25 performing offices and increased their authorized strength. If you look at it today, the hiring freeze, we have 250 people above authorized headcount. I took cost over time dollars and we converted it into fulltime labor. It takes about one year to get a vsr up to speed. Two years for rvsr. Better processing, more leaders in place within next six months. The other concern ive had i will finish this quickly because my time is running out, but the concern we have rather than one person dealing with a particular claim and having attended over and over again, quite often can cause a lot of confusion. Do you have that same concern that maybe one person is not focusing on one claim and it passed through multiple hands. Agco problem that 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 that question and semper fi. To talk about that question specifically, we have learned this is a relatively new initiative that we are still learning from. Want to make sure our claims assignment or claim situation was matched to where capacity was. As we get more data from the system we are running better ways to optimize this. One of the things were doing in the next release is actually maximizing the amount of work that goes to the home station. We believe that will do several things. Number it will most likely a one, sign a claim back to an employee that has seen a before. And as one of two former on the on this panel and one of three veterans, we also received that Stakeholder Feedback from our vsos. It was frequently impacted as well. We have heard that feedback. We have created enhancement requests that will allow us to almost reversed the percentage 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 would you think employees handle one claim as it processes through under the existing system . What i can tell you is right now the amount of work per each step in the process thats being assigned to the home station is about 3035 of each daily distribution. We believe with the march release that will allow us to increase in about 50 maybe as , high as the mid50s. That will significantly reduce the amount of instances where multiple employees are seeing the same. Do you have an average of how many people touch claims as they go through . Sir it depends on the , claimants up. 3, 6, 8 . Environmentin any it takes five or six touches from initial development to completion to begin with. We would like to add that number to the record. 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 Companies in my territory. Im a thirdgeneration manufacturing daughter and granddaughter. This condition about improving condition depends on ownership. The vsos has been not ownership. In so, i think we need to figure at how we ensure we are reducing the number of touches are appropriate. You may have very complex claims into those require and should go to the people best able to do that. And there are specialized claims we know are much more fairly and rapidly processed in specialized settings. I think we do need to work for the typical claim to keep a it closer to home. Keep the vsos engaged. And reduce the number of touches we need to have. So if you could talk in a little bit in addition, mr. Burk, about in march issuing a directive to reduce that number some more so it stays in the ros. So what are you hearing that will just not reduce the a time but improve the accuracy and 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 we are calling it the diagnostic tool. This is purely based to improve and focus on the quality of our claims processing at all