Noteboom The Law Firm

VA’s Insufficient Employee-Training Program Contributed to Claim Backlog

October 1, 2010 - At a recent House Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the National Veterans Affairs Council (NVAC) testified about serious issues within the VA's employee-training program.  

The AFGE and the NVAC believe the VA's faulty employee-training program is a significant factor in the VA's enormous disability claims backlog. Without the proper training, the employees will not be able to work to clear the backlog either. Their testimony pointed out what they saw as multiple insufficiencies in the VA's employee-training program, including:

• Insufficient training for experienced employees on claim intricacies;
• Insufficient training for training instructors; and
• Insufficient training for Congressionally mandated policy requirements.

One of the largest gaps in the VA's employee-training program is the inability to track new employees as they move through the program. Because of the ever present and ominous backlog of claims looming over the VA, new employees are rushed through training in order to get them to start in on the backlog.

Not only are the employees undertrained for the current compensation problems, there has been very little training on the new Agent Orange claims that will soon bombard the VA's claim processing center. Hopefully these issues are addressed immediately before the VA finds itself getting even farther behind in addressing the disability claims of our nation's veterans.