Noteboom The Law Firm

Private Providers To Recover Veterans’ Medical Records

December 7, 2010 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) believes utilizing private contractors will help their overall processing time of disability compensation claims. The VA has contracted with a private company to retrieve veterans' medical records from private physicians. The VA hopes by farming out this duty to a private contractor, the VA will streamline their processing time.

By 2015 the VA plans on being able to process every disability claim within 125 days of it being filed and with a 98% accuracy rate. It currently takes the VA approximately 40 days to retrieve medical records from veterans' private physicians. The VA believes by having an outside, private contractor recover those records, the recovery time could be reduced to 10 days. Regional offices in the pilot program include:

• New York;
• Phoenix;
• St. Louis,
• Chicago;
• Indianapolis;
• Portland;
• Anchorage; and
• Jackson, Miss.

Using a private company to recover these records is part of a pilot test program, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. Secretary Shinseki drew the distinction between this pilot program and the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record initiative. That initiative, which is a coupling between the VA, the Military Health System, and private delivery networks, is different in that the private contractors associated with it recover EMRs. Once those EMRs are recovered, they are scanned and sent to the VA via a secure connection. 

Approximately 60,000 medical records will be requested as part of this pilot program between the included offices. Waivers will be required from veterans taking part in the pilot, which will be signed at the time the veteran first applies for their VA health benefits.