Media Advisories

On Tuesday, February 14, 2017, at 10:30 a.m. the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs will host a hearing entitled, “Exploring National Work Queue’s Impact on Claims Processing.” The hearing will examine the Department of Veterans Affairs’ implementation of the National Work Queue (NWQ).

The following event is open to the press:

WHO: Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs

WHAT: “Exploring National Work Queue’s Impact on Claims Processing”

WHEN: 10:30 a.m., Tuesday,  February 14, 2017

WHERE: 334 Cannon House Office Building

Background: Prior to the NWQ model, VA would broker claims out to other regional offices (RO) to better distribute workload. However, the brokering process depended on VA employees to determine which cases to broker to other ROs.

NWQ is an IT-based system that automatically distributes claims among VA regional offices with the intention of expediting claims decisions by assigning claims processing based on a regional office’s capacity, instead of assigning the claim to the regional office in the state where the veteran lives. 

Although the NWQ was scheduled to be rolled out in November 2015, test runs discovered problems with the program, and VA did not fully implement NWQ until May 8, 2016.

The hearing will focus on evaluating NWQ’s potential to improve accuracy and speed in claims processing, as well as whether or not NWQ will be used to process non-rating claims and appeals.