The VA announced that in fiscal 2023, department benefits officials completed nearly 2 million veteran and survivor claims, the most in agency history and up almost 16% from the previous year. During a press call Wednesday, VA Undersecretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs said through the first three months of fiscal 2024, his staffers are 34% ahead of last year’s pace.

However, the quality of those “completed claims” have been called into question.   There are numerous decisions, called duty to assist decisions that simply state that the VA failed to properly process the claim and will move forward with processing. Therefore, no actual decision that has been made.

Further, despite the claims of success from the VA, the back log of cases for first-time benefits claims in the system (cases that have taken more than four months to complete) has now risen to over 400,000 claims, the highest backlog numbers since June 2014. The VA stated that they expect “the backlog to stabilize in coming months and fall back down to pre-pandemic levels in 2025.” Further, officials are expected to release specific projection targets in coming weeks. Only time will tell if the VA will move toward not only significantly lowering the backlog of cases, but ensuring that the completed decisions are adequately processed.

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