Good Afternoon.

Would everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Flags are located at the front and back of the room.

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you all to the halls of Congress in what has been a profoundly historic and important week for the nation and for our veterans.  Over the past seven days the Full Committee convened a successful Claims Summit which brought together dozens of the nation’s top veterans’ stakeholders including VA officials, GAO representatives, Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs), veterans’ advocates, and academia and even industry leaders in this area.   The big news from the Summit is that VA admitted what many of us have known for a while, the system for processing compensation and pension (C&P) claims is broken beyond repair, and must be replaced.  We welcome this acknowledgement and look forward to working with VA in developing this new system.

Of course, on a rare Sunday session, Congress passed, and yesterday, the President signed part one of the sweeping package to reform the nation’s health care system.  I for one look forward to the second part of health reform reaching the President’s desk. 

Finally, this week, we have passed a number of bills in the full House that will significantly help our veterans.  These include the End Veteran Homelessness Act of 2010 to provide $200 million in support of Sec. Shinseki’s goal of ending homelessness for America’s warriors.  We also passed the Helping Heroes Keep Their Homes Act of 2009, sponsored by our colleague Tom Perriello, which would rotect home mortgages of veterans and servicemembers.  We also passed the disability compensation  COLA bill, that would allow a Cost of living increase by the end of the year, also sponsored by Mr. Perriello.  The National Guard Employment Protection Act of 2010 which aims to help preserve jobs of soldiers ordered to full time deployments with the National Guard is set to be voted on today.  And I remain committed to helping Chairman Filner push legislation to help our veterans who were harmed by Agent Orange exposure.

In this afternoon’s hearing entitled: Examination of VA Regional Office Disability Quality Review Methods: Is VBA’s Systematic Technical Review System (STAR) Making the Grade?, we will examine the primary quality review tool employed by the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to assess the accuracy of disability compensation and pension claims processing.   The STAR system can help VBA monitor the quality and accuracy of ratings at its regional offices (ROs).  Through this quality control tool, VBA can focus attention on poorly performing ROs and help the agency direct additional staff and training to problem offices.  At the end of the day the goal is for VA to get the claim right the first time so that veterans are not improperly denied the benefits they deserve or faced with lengthy appeals cycles.

The STAR system was implemented by VBA in October 1998 to improve the measurement of the accuracy of claims processing.  Since FY 2007, VBA has set for itself a performance goal of completing compensation claim ratings without error, 90% of the time.  Its long term strategic accuracy goal is 98%.  Unfortunately, the VA is far from achieving this goal.  Until the STAR system provides an accurate accounting of the error rate at the VBA, it is difficult to envision a path for meeting this goal. 

VA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) produced studies which revealed several issues that impede the efficiency and consistency of the STAR system.  Specifically, OIG suggests that any claims ratings accuracy numbers reported by VA should be discounted by as much as 10% to yield an accurate performance measurement.  I’m also personally troubled by GAO’s finding that VBA claim processing accuracy rate is particularly low in cases filed by veterans seeking benefits based upon Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).  Today, we intend to analyze these studies through hearing testimony from representatives of VA’s OIG and GAO. 

VBA has made some improvements to its claims rating system since the implementation of STAR system.  We look forward to hearing from them about these improvements and how we can help them with any areas of concern. 

To fully understand the STAR quality assurance program, it’s important to review the C&P rating system itself.  Through its disability compensation program, VBA pays monthly benefits to veterans for injuries or diseases incurred or aggravated while on active military duty.  To access a claim, the application for disability benefits must be “developed,” a process that involves obtaining all necessary evidence of the veteran’s service and disability to support the claim.  After development, claims go to a Rating Veterans Service Representative (RVSR) for a decision.  RVSRs determine if a veteran’s disability is service connected and assigns a percentage rating (ranging from 0 to 100 percent) that is intended to represent the average earning reduction a veteran with that condition would experience in civilian occupations.  The veteran is then notified of the decision.

For reopened claims, the veteran’s previously assigned diagnostic codes with evaluations also affect the veteran’s overall combined percentage of disability.  Regional offices use previously assigned diagnostic codes, along with their percentages, in combination with current assigned diagnostic code percentages to determine the combined level of disability. Once a claim is completed, the result of that claim or “end product” is cleared, and work credit is given to the regional office.

A completed claim and corresponding cleared end product is then subject to review by STAR reviewers based on a statistical sample of all completed rating end products.

In the 110th Congress, I introduced H.R. 5892, which outlined a series of steps to improve the quality of VA’s claims processing system. These recommendations formed the core of directives which were codified by P.L. 110-389, the Veterans Disability Benefits Claims Modernization Act of 2008.  Today’s hearing also provide us a chance to gauge how these quality control measures have been implemented by VA.

With that, I look forward to the informed testimony of our witnesses and insightful comments and questions from my colleagues on the Subcommittee.

I now recognize Ranking Member Lamborn for his Opening Statement.