Plan to Speed up Military Veterans Disability Claims Wins Contest

Pittsburgh, PAAn assistant manager at a Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs Office has been selected as a winner in a nationwide innovation competition among VA employees for a plan that would speed up veterans' disability claims.

The competition, sponsored by the office of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki, selected one of 10 novel proposals for improving VA medical care. Jack Hudson submitted the winning idea for a new standardized medical questionnaire for private physicians to fill out when treating veterans.

Currently, doctors perform a series of examinations to gather information on veterans' conditions and degrees of disability. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the new questionnaires could drastically reduce the amount of time it takes VA physicians to assess veterans and process their claims, allowing veterans to receive their health benefits nearly a month sooner.

"It cuts down the processing time and the paperwork that is necessary to adjudicate that claim," said Scott Hope, an assistant supervisor with a local Disabled American Veterans group. "It cuts down a lot of the preliminaries."

Hudson believes that the questionnaires could also improve the health systems by reducing the number of exams performed on individual patients, freeing medical workers to treat more patients.