Mandatory overtime for VA claims workers
According to the Huffington Post, the Department of Veterans Affairs will require at least 10,000 claims workers to work at least 20 hours of overtime each month until September.
“We need to surge our resources now to help those who have waited the longest and end the backlog,” said Allison Hickey, undersecretary for benefits at the VA.
It seems they might finally be getting tired of all the recent negative attention and may actually start putting some effort into their job … or they realized they completely blew the 2015 deadline and are doing everything they can to minimize the pain they are going to feel when they fail.
The most important thing the VA needs to remember while working these claims is that they aren’t just paper packets … these are people – whom are represented by those packets, and often, people in a lot of pain and a very bad point in their life. The VA needs to get the backlog fixed – but they need to do it right (the first time).
Cross posted from After the Army.
Category: Veterans' Affairs Department
Long, long overdue.
About time.
The “getting it right the first time” line is huge in this. They better not just be going through this things and low balling the ratings and rushing just to “get them done” looking for a big “GREAT JOB V.A.!” just to end up with another 5 years worth of Appeals to sort through.
ItAllFades: Absolutely correct. Let’s also hope they don’t take the opposite tack and simply rubberstamp everything. If that happens and you think we have a fraud problem now . . . you ain’t seen nothing.
Just thinking out loud. Four months at 20 hours per month = 80 hours = 10 work days. Furlough = 11 days.
Cost of a furlough hour < overtime hour. 11 days of furlough costs less than 10 days of overtime.
Tell me again why they are furloughing people to save money? Where is the money coming from to pay overtime?
Mandatory overtime = overwork = lowered quality of care.
That’s not the way you fix things in hospitals, that’s the way people get hurt or paperwork gets tangled, or both. It’s quite probable that the claims will be mishandled — either rubberstamped or shitcanned.
The proper way to do it is bring in more people, not overwork the staff you already have.
(That’s assuming, of course, that the current staff is actually working, and working at full capacity, now.)
Let’s see…normal time, fuck off, don’t do jack, get OT at time-and-a-half to do what you should have been doing during regular work hours…yeah, that’s some punishment ya got there, DVA.
They should give this an Operation name. I vote for “Operation Low Ball Express”
The appeals process is going to get hammered in the next year now.
If I were confident they were using the OT to work smarter, not just work more, I’d support it.
If I were confident they were going to be setting themselves up to avoid something like this in the future, I’d support it.
But I’m not. I suspect we’re going to find the VA back in the same position in a few years and needing to be bailed out.
They need to hire 40,000 new claims adjustors for however many years it takes to get the time down for a claim from an insane level to rational and respectful numbers. Though, that would take political courage on the part of the POTUS and Congress… and no-one wants to be seen as spending more on “government waste & largess”. Every claimant that gets discouraged and gives up, every time a claim takes an extra year to be resolved or disappears, that is just a bit more money the govt isn’t “wasting” and the national spending numbers look a little better. Politics are sickening, but it’s hardly the first time our nation has left her veterans out in the cold.
Arby: the VA isn’t furloughing many if any people.
The VA was pretty much exempt from furlough actions. Their programs are largely “mandatory spending” vice “discretionary spending” (like most of DoD’s spending).
Amen! It’s about time! And it’s totally doable….20 hours in a month equates to less than an extra hour per day. They owe it to the veterans who are depending on the money from those claims….they earned every bit of it.
Well actually, I guess it comes out to about an hour of overtime per day when you factor in that some of those days in the month are weekends. But I’m sure you still get my point that it’s not an outrageous amount of OT they’re being asked to work.
I’m with NHSparky on this one. I suspect they’ll get overtime and maybe process 2 claims a day, whereas they’re barely processing 1 a day now without getting overtime.
Something like this, perhaps:
VA IG Inspector#1: Why don’t you go ahead and grab a seat
and join us for a minute?
VA IG Inspector #2: You see, what we’re actually trying to do here is, we’re just, we’re trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work. So, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day for you?
VA Employee: Yeah.
VA IG Inspector #1: Great.
VA Employee: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. Uh, I use the side door, that way my supervisor can’t see me. And, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
VA IG Inspector #2: Da-uh? Space out?
VA Employee: Yeah, I just stare at my desk but it looks like I’m working. I do that for uh, probably another hour after lunch, too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
VA IG Inspector #1: Uh, Peter, would you be a good sport and indulge us and just tell us a little more?
VA Employee: Oh, yeah. Let me tell you something about TPS reports.
So, vacations are cancelled? Sick leave–especially Friday, Monday, and the day immediately before and after a holiday weekend will be sepecially scrutinized? Lunch times are to be strictly enforced? Same day personal leave requests will be denied, barring an emergency? Tardiness and early departures from work will mean leave w/o pay? Successful VA offices are being studied to learn why they are successful when others fail? Managers are being replaced?
@14–for the Office Space reference, I hereby award you +1 Internets.
Well, if the VA is like the rest of government, they won’t get overtime pay, they’ll get the overtime as credit time – days off. So after they get done with their spurt of activity, there will be an equal time of neglect and they’re back to where they started. I think that’s called a “vicious cycle”.
Gee, government agencies chasing their tails and never getting shit solved? Who knew?
Remember the SEC porn watchers? The GSA Las Vegas conference? Well, neither apparently wastes time and money like the VA. The link below itemizes a number of job-improvement efforts by the VA. While they were partying, some of the folks were acquiring the basis for the claims the VA cannot seem to find the time to examine. The OT will fix NOTHING. It’s a, “See, we weally, weally care and are doing something CYA.”
http://www.nextgov.com/health/2012/08/va-held-nearly-1000-conferences-during-past-two-and-half-years/57689/
@16 – You’re welcome.
So, who took my red Swingline stapler?
@14, 16
Don’t take the internets Sparky awarded … I’m still downloading mine from a while back …
http://valorguardians.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Downloading+the+internet.+Like+a+boss_d4a611_3433210.gif
I would be happy about this. After all, government employees scoring mandated overtime for doing work that should have already done for Veterans, and getting overtime pay for it? Right? Good money deal for them…. right?
Yeah, except I’m one of those 650,000 OTHER Federal workers who will be getting screwed out of take home pay and rent money when I get furloughed each Friday, because this administration fucked us all with their socialist spending sprees.
Hope your broken trucks get you where you want to go, ‘cuz I can’t work on them.
That’s only 1 extra hour per day. How many claims are they going to work in that hour? 1? 6? 1000?
This is just a payoff to some workers, perhaps for their silence with a big middle finger to vets who will think the VA is doing something.
Deeds, not words.
I work at a VA office doing claims. The mandatory OT is the result of senior management making promises to Congress that we cant keep. Us front line claims handlers keep telling them that the system is antiquated and full of fraud based upon bs claims, underhanded lawyers who tell vets to appeal every decision, and the insane practice of trying a new system every two to three months. Most of my co-workers are also disabled vets and we are under tremendous pressure to get claims done fast vice getting them done properly.
The rules have become so lax that nearly every claim I encounter has PTSD. war-time service or not.
Hey what’s the reason for the long wait on new claims? Specifically those based on IU?
What you don’t understand when you’re bashing VA workers is that they have very high production standards that are very tough to meet. Couple this with Mandatory OT and bad policies by the “leadership” and you have veterans’ claims not getting in depth attention. If we could have fewer claims by veterans already receiving 100% and a way to avoid having to start the claim over every time a veyteran decides to add another condition, then maybe some shit would get worked out. As it is, the leadership lets ignorant people scapegoat us.