Veterans affairs probe: Records found in shredder bin
Employee under investigation
By CHUCK CRUMBO - ccrumbo@thestate.com
Veterans Affairs officials are investigating why 95 records were erroneously dumped in a shredder bin at the VA office in Columbia.
An unidentified employee at the Columbia office is under investigation for mishandling the documents, which include new benefits claims and other personal files, VA officials said.
“I can’t discuss in detail what action may be taken against an employee in this instance until the investigation is complete,” VA press secretary Alison Aikele said Wednesday.
VA HOTLINE
Veterans with concerns about their files and claims are asked to call the U.S. Department of Vet-erans Affairs, (800) 827-1000.
In South Carolina, the possible destruction of benefit claims could affect some of the state’s 413,000 veterans. The shredding probe involves the VA’s benefits offices, not the hospitals.
So far, few veterans suspect they might have a problem resulting from their benefit claim being erroneously shredded.
“We don’t know how many, we don’t know why it happened,” said Rodney Burne, quartermaster of the Veterans of Foreign Wars S.C. department. “It will be interesting to find out.”
The documents slated for destruction were found in the shredder bin Oct. 3 as part of the agency’s inspector general’s review of how veterans records and claims are handled.
The probe discovered 41 of the VA’s 57 regional offices, including Columbia, had 500 records wrongly slated for shredding. The VA further determined that half of those records were found in shredder bins at the Columbia office and at two other offices, St. Louis and Cleveland.
Forty-six of the records — or about half — discovered in the shredder bin at the Columbia office were either new claims for benefits or supporting documents.
Other claims included burial and death benefits, notices of clients’ disagreements with VA rulings, and documents for education benefits.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee, whose membership includes U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., plans to look into the issue in mid-November, an aide said. “We’re going to have a roundtable discussion,” the aide said, explaining the session would not be as formal as a committee hearing.
Officials from the VA as well as representatives of veterans service organizations will be invited to the discussion, she added.
Brown called the reports “troubling,” and added “there is never any excuse for the shredding of documents especially when they jeopardize the benefits our veterans are entitled to.”
Brown said the incident “shows how important it is for the VA to focus on modernizing its information technology systems and establishing clear safeguards.”
The shredding issue was first reported by vawatchdog.org, a Web site run by Army veteran Larry Scott, of Vancouver, Wash.
Scott learned records were erroneously dumped in shredder bins at the VA’s Detroit office. VA investigators discovered Detroit was just part of the problem, so they ordered all 57 offices to check their shredder bins.
The fact that the Columbia office would have the most records in the shredder bin wasn’t a surprise, Scott said.
The Columbia office has a reputation as a “troubled office,” meaning it has a low clearance rate of veterans claims.
In 2005, the VA reported Columbia had the third-highest remand rate of the agency’s 57 regional offices. A remand is a benefit case that, once appealed, must be redone.
The VA said 50.1 percent of 3,095 cases filed with the Columbia office had to be remanded. The agencywide average was 44.3 percent.
Scott doubted Oct. 3 was the only time documents were erroneously headed for the shredder.
The mishandled documents add fuel to many veterans’ suspicions that the agency’s policy is to frustrate a vet’s effort to process a claim, Scott said.
“The expression is: ‘Delay, deny and hope that I die,’” Scott said.
Millions of documents are routinely shredded by VA offices without incident, Aikele said.
Shredding is done to protect the veterans’ privacy. It is supposed to be done after documents have been copied, she added.
“They’re just not tossed in the garbage,” Aikele said.
Reach Crumbo at (803) 771-8503.
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If anyone believes this is a just once in a lifetime mistake and only one employee was involved in destruction of records, I have some beach front property in Beech Island for you. Columbia SC VARO has one of the worst reputations of properly processing veterans compensation claims, and they did it the old fashioned way, they earned it.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Veterans affairs probe: Records found in shredder bin
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1 comment:
I am a volunteer disabled vet claims advocate here in NY.
I have been advising vets and widows to obtain copies of anything from their POA that they might need to prove their evidence was properly submitted to the VA in light of the recent shedding news.(such as a dated copy of a 21-4138 they sent to VA supporting the evidence)
If they were denied and the evidence was not listed on the SOC, it might have been (more than likely) lost, misplaced, or worse yet, destroyed.
Has anyone here been denied copies of anything in their POA file?
Since Peake called a stack of almost 500 documents-a “handful” I wonder since I heard from a vet in Texas whose POA just refused to release to him a copy of a VA stamped receipt of his evidence that they say is in his POA file and also that I was denied yesterday by my POA,in a letter, ‘ copies of anything at all in my POA file-that we are either 2 isolated cases or maybe the way Peake looks like stuff- we are the beginning of a ‘trend’.
Those POA records of our submissions might be critical to our claims. Their 21-4138s might be the only proof at all for many vets who were unjustly denied because VA claimed they hjad sent in no evidence.
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