The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense have been collaborating on an "integrated disability evaluation system" pilot program designed to streamline the disability evaluation process and it could be greatly expanded, but a recent hearing before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee looked at a number of problem areas with the pilot including shortages of staff to perform disability medical evaluations, program funding, and program participants’ satisfaction.
"Both departments must ensure that each new location has what it needs to effectively operate the Integrated Disability Evaluation System before it is expanded," said committee chair Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, adding, "the rush to move forward quickly should not come before our goal to provide a quality process to service-members."
IDES includes a joint disability medical examination that can be used for the existing DoD Medical Evaluation Board/ Physical Evaluation Board process and VA disability compensation process and the committee was insistent that the pilots not be expanded hastily, though management remains optimistic.
Defense undersecretary John Campbell said most of the 27 pilot locations are successful and efficient, but acknowledged challenges.
He said site certification procedures, conducted by DoD and VA senior leadership, have been developed to ensure each future IDES location is prepared to implement the IDES, including that each has sufficient resources and staffing, and required training.
The VA’s executive director of the VA/DoD collaboration service acknowledged that the department "had not yet developed robust business processes to certify each site’s preparedness before it became operational."
However, he noted that the integrated approach in the pilots has "eliminated many sequential and duplicative processes found in the legacy system" and "reduced the overall processing time for the delivery of DoD disability benefits from 540 days to 291 days while shortening the period until delivery of VA disability benefits after separation from an average of 166 days to near 30 days."
