According to VBA criteria, correction of a prior error should not be recorded as a separate claim. In the following examples VBA used the wrong establishment date to compute their timeliness. These types of errors understate the actual processing time. When claims were transferred among VA facilities, VBA personnel input the date of receipt in the office processing the claim or a later date rather than the date of initial receipt in a VA facility. These claims were received by VA as many as 599 days earlier than the recorded date of claim.
Personnel input the date the claim was first recorded in the automated system as the date of claim.
These claims were actually received in VA facilities 1 day to 134 days before they were recorded in the system. The recorded date of claim was the date when an award or disallowance was prepared. Data from the automated systems erroneously indicated each of these claims was processed in 6 days or less. Actual processing times ranged from 40 to 731 days. When a claim is received from a veteran whose claims folder has been stored in the VA Records Processing Center, VBA personnel must retrieve the claims folder before processing the claim.