VA moving toward paperless environments
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has faced significant criticism for its massive backlog of unaddressed disability and other medical claims. That issue led the federal agency to consider the benefits of going paperless, and instead rely on document management systems, document capture and more to ensure better service for the nation's veterans.
Already, six VA centers across the U.S. are able to handle paperless claims at this point, and more are expected to join them before the end of the year, according to a report from Military.com. In addition, the VA is expected to hire more a few thousand more claims processors to work through that backlog – which currently totals about 100,000 claims, but is down from a previous high of more than 611,000 in 2013 – as soon as possible. New VA Secretary Dr. David Shulkin recently noted that reducing the backlog is one of his chief priorities.
One area in which any new hires can potentially increase the speed and ease of working through the backlog is by incorporating distributed capture. The ability of any employee in an organization to quickly scan documents into a system, no matter where they're located, may be especially important for the VA given how many health care centers they operate nationwide.
Smoother processes can help
The VA also recently invested in new document management systems that allow for quicker backlog reduction in other ways, a separate Military.com report noted. For instance, if one particular VA center has more records than it can handle, the extra data can be shifted – via workflows – to other centers that don't have backlogs to deal with.
While Thomas Murphy, acting undersecretary for benefits at the Veterans Benefits Administration, recently told federal lawmakers that the backlog will probably never reach zero, as more centers come online with paperless capabilities, the number will necessarily begin to decline more quickly.
This can serve as an important lesson to any organization: An overall commitment to proper document management and workflows can give more power when it comes to dealing with even the biggest problems.
