Veterans' Disability Benefits: VA Can Improve Its Procedures for Obtaining Military Service Records
Released: 2006-12-19T00:00:00

Letter

Background

Veterans submit their disability compensation claims to 1 of VBA’s 57 regional offices. These claims contain, on average, five disabling medical conditions that the veteran believes are service connected. For each claimed condition, VA must determine if credible evidence is available to support the veteran’s contention of service connection. VA grants service connection for an average of three of the five conditions claimed by a veteran. Key sources of evidence for determining service connection are veterans’ military service medical and personnel records. To determine service connection in some cases, VA also may need to obtain information from DOD historical military records for the units in which veterans served.

VBA’s regional offices face a complex task in obtaining veterans’ military service records because (1) service records consist of numerous types of records that can originate from numerous sources within or outside DOD, (2) the process for collecting and storing service records has varied substantially for different groups of veterans over time, (3) service records cannot always be found at the expected storage locations, and (4) the service records of many veterans were destroyed by a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center, a primary repository for service personnel and medical records. For detailed information on military service records, including the types and locations of the records and the process for collecting and storing them, see appendix II.

Once a claim has all the necessary evidence, the regional office evaluates the claim and determines whether the claimant is eligible for benefits. If a veteran disagrees with a regional office’s decision on any of the issues in his or her claim, the veteran may file an appeal with the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, requesting a more favorable decision. In many cases, the board finds it cannot make a final decision on a veteran’s appeal until VBA does additional work on the case. In such cases, the board sends (remands) the case back to VBA to perform the necessary additional work. The additional work required for remands can include making initial or follow- up attempts to obtain relevant records in accordance with the requirements of the Veterans Claims Assistance Act. Under the act, if relevant records—such as military service records—are believed to be in the custody of a federal agency, VBA’s regional offices must continue requesting the records until either the agency provides the records or the regional office is reasonably certain the records do not exist or that further efforts would be futile. VA’s regulations state that the regional office cannot discontinue its efforts unless it has obtained a statement from the agency advising VA that the records either do not exist or are not in the agency’s possession. For detailed information on VA’s disability compensation claims and appeals process, see appendix III.

Internal Assessments Indicate General Compliance, but VBA Has Not Assessed the Quality of Its Research Performed at the National Personnel Records Center

VA’s internal assessments indicate that regional offices generally comply with the requirements of the Veterans Claims Assistance Act for obtaining veterans’ military service records. However, VBA does not have a system for assessing the reliability and accuracy of research done on behalf of regional offices by a VBA unit located at the National Personnel Records Center, where the service records of many veterans are stored. The VBA quality review unit that evaluates the accuracy of regional office decisions on compensation claims has found that that less than 4 percent of these decisions contain errors involving regional offices’ failing to obtain military service records as required by law. Similarly, of all the compensation appeals cases decided by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals during November 2004–January 2006, the board remanded less than 3 percent of these cases to VBA for rework due to deficiencies in obtaining military service records. However, because VBA does not systematically evaluate the quality of the research done on behalf of regional offices by the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center, VBA does not know the extent to which the information that this unit provides to regional offices is reliable and accurate.

VBA Quality Reviews Show Regional Offices Generally Comply with Veterans Claims Assistance Act Requirements for Obtaining Military Service Records

VBA maintains a quality review program known as the Systematic Technical Accuracy Review (STAR) program. VBA selects random samples of each regional office’s compensation decisions and assesses the regional office’s accuracy in processing and deciding such cases. For each decision, the STAR quality review unit reviews the documentation contained in the regional office’s claim file to determine, among other things, whether the regional office complied with claims assistance act duty-to-assist requirements for obtaining relevant records, made correct service connection determinations for each claimed condition, and made correct disability rating evaluations for each condition determined to be service connected. An error in any of these decision elements has the potential to result in a different decision outcome. One of VBA’s fiscal year 2007 performance goals is that 88 percent of compensation decisions should contain no errors that could affect decision outcomes, and the long-term strategic goal is 98 percent.

STAR data from reviews of regional office decisions made during the first half of fiscal year 2006 showed that less than 4 percent of the cases reviewed contained any type of error related to the law’s requirements for developing evidence. Because military service records are only one component in the overall body of evidence that regional offices must develop, the percentage of cases with errors related to military service records would be even smaller than the 4 percent error rate. While the STAR database does not capture statistical data on specific types of errors in evidence development, it does contain quality reviewers’ narrative comments on the nature of errors found. A VBA analysis of these narrative comments showed that over half of all evidence development errors were due to regional offices not obtaining VA medical examinations or opinions when needed and using inadequate medical examinations. Thus, on the basis of STAR data, one would conclude that errors related to military service records account for less than half—or about 2 percent—of all evidence development errors.

Decisions of Board of Veterans’ Appeals Show Regional Offices Generally Comply with Claims Assistance Act Requirements for Obtaining Military Service Records

Since November 2004, when the Board of Veterans’ Appeals began tracking whether remands are the fault of regional offices, it has remanded relatively few cases—less than 3 percent—because of regional office deficiencies in obtaining military records. For example, as of January 2006, the board had made decisions on 41,517 compensation cases and had remanded at least one issue in 44 percent of these cases (see table 1). However, of the 41,517 cases, 25.6 percent contained issues that had been remanded for reasons considered to be the fault of the regional office, and only 2.8 percent contained issues remanded specifically because of deficiencies in obtaining military service records.

For each case decided by the appeals board, it also tracks the outcome of each contested issue in the case—for example, a veteran may have contested the denial of service connection for a specific medical condition and also may have asked for a higher disability rating on another condition for which the regional office granted service connection. The 41,517 compensation cases decided by the board contained a total of 88,156 contested issues, of which 39 percent (34,351) were remanded to VBA. However, of the total contested issues, 23 percent (20,191) were remanded for reasons considered to be the fault of the regional offices.

For the 20,191 issues remanded because of regional office deficiencies, the board identified a total of 36,812 reasons for remanding these issues (see table 2). Of these remand reasons, only 7.6 percent were related to inadequacies in obtaining military service records (service medical records, 3.5 percent; service personnel records, 2.4 percent; and military unit historical records, 1.6 percent). The predominant reasons for remands were deficiencies in obtaining medical examinations or opinions and nonmilitary records and in providing proper due process.

Focusing only on issues in which veterans asked the appeals board to grant service connection for a medical condition that the regional office had denied, the board identified about 12 percent of the reasons for remanding service connection issues as being related to inadequacies in obtaining military service records.

VBA Lacks Systematic Quality Review of Research Performed by the VBA Unit Located at the National Personnel Records Center

To obtain service records stored at the National Personnel Records Center, regional offices submit requests to a VBA unit located at the center, asking the VBA unit to provide copies of service records and/or provide information contained in the records. This unit responded to such requests from regional offices for about 290,000 cases in calendar year 2005. For certain types of compensations claims, such as herbicide exposure and PTSD claims, VBA’s written procedures instruct regional offices not to request a copy of the veteran’s entire service personnel record, which can be voluminous. Instead, regional offices are supposed to rely on the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center to obtain the veteran’s files, perform a physical search of the files for relevant records, provide copies of only certain specified records, analyze certain types of records, and provide regional offices with narrative answers on the results of their research and analyses. Thus, regional offices rely on the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center to do thorough and complete searches of records, do reliable analyses of records, and provide accurate and clear narrative reports on the results.

VBA, however, does not have a systematic quality review program that evaluates the accuracy of the work that the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center performs on behalf of the regional offices. Such a program is needed as part of an adequate system of internal management controls for VBA’s administration of the compensation program. An example of why the records research done by VBA employees at the National Personnel Records Center must be reliable is provided by disability claims based on exposure to herbicides in Vietnam. Under the Agent Orange Act of 1991, VA presumes that any veteran who had set foot on land in the Republic of Vietnam at any time during the Vietnam era (January 9, 1962, to May 7, 1975) was exposed to herbicides such as Agent Orange. If any such veteran files a claim for certain specified diseases that have been determined to be attributable to herbicide exposure, VA must presumptively grant service connection to the veteran for such diseases. If a veteran claims that he or she was officially stationed on land in Vietnam during that period, the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center should be able to verify this fact by examining standard personnel forms in his or her service personnel file. However, if a veteran who was not officially stationed on land in Vietnam claims that on some occasion he or she did set foot on land in Vietnam during that period, VBA may encounter more difficulty obtaining the evidence needed to verify the veteran’s claim because standard personnel forms would not document such occasions.

In such cases, VBA procedures instruct regional offices not to ask for the veteran’s entire service personnel file, but instead, the regional office must ask the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center to search the veteran’s personnel file for any evidence that might corroborate his or her claim of having set foot on land in Vietnam. One regional office that we visited provided an example of how the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center could overlook corroborating evidence contained in the file and cause a significant delay of benefits for a veteran. In this particular case, an Air Force veteran claimed that he had been assigned to an aircraft that had landed and spent a short time on the ground in Vietnam during the presumptive period. The VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center did not provide the regional office with evidence supporting this claim, and the regional office ultimately denied the claim. However, the veteran appealed the decision to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, which remanded the case to the regional office and ordered the regional office to obtain and review the veteran’s entire personnel file. After obtaining the entire file from the National Personnel Records Center, the regional office found documents in the file that provided sufficient evidence to conclude that the veteran’s claim was credible. If the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center had found and reported this evidence to the regional office during the initial claims process, the veteran’s claim could have been granted without his having to go through the appeals process.

Also, for many PTSD claims, regional offices potentially must rely on the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center to do thorough research of personnel records. PTSD results from personal exposure to traumatic events (stressors) that can occur during combat events; noncombat events—such as plane crashes, ships sinking, explosions, burn ward duty, or graves registration duty—and personal assault. For such claims, if evidence substantiates that a veteran engaged in a combat event, the veteran’s own testimony is sufficient to substantiate the occurrence of a claimed stressor associated with that event. If engagement in combat is not substantiated, then the regional office must seek other evidence substantiating the occurrence of the stressor claimed by the veteran.

Only for PTSD claims involving personal assault do VBA’s procedures instruct regional offices to request a copy of the entire personnel file from the National Personnel Records Center. Routinely requesting the entire file for personal assault cases is permitted because such cases can involve personal and sensitive incidents that sometimes are not officially reported. Therefore, the entire file needs to be examined for indications of changes in behavior or performance that may have been related to the alleged rape or assault. For all other types of PTSD stressors claimed by veterans, the documents that regional offices may routinely request from the veterans’ service personnel files do not include performance reports or written justifications for awards and commendations. According to regional office officials, however, these documents sometimes can contain evidence that supports a veteran’s PTSD claim. As a result, the regional offices depend on the VBA employees stationed at the National Personnel Records Center to read such documents and report any supporting evidence to the regional office.

Officials of VBA’s Records Management Center—which oversees the work of the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center—informed us they are considering implementing a systematic program for reviewing the quality of all types of research work performed by this unit. Although a quality review function is already in place, only one analyst has been responsible for reviewing a 3 percent random sample of each employee’s work products. Given the volume of work products and limited time because of other duties, the analyst told us he examined few actual service record files to assess the accuracy of the work done by the employees. Instead, the analyst had resorted to using professional judgment to assess whether the content of the responses that employees provided to regional offices appeared reasonable in light of the nature of the request to which they were responding. Only if the analyst thought the response content looked questionable did he actually obtain the service record files and examine the records to determine the accuracy of the response. For example, the analyst told us that in a recent month he had reviewed actual service record files for only 17 of the approximately 700 responses randomly selected for review.

According to officials of the VA Records Management Center, they are considering establishing a team of three or four full-time quality review specialists that would report to the director of the VA Records Management Center. If implemented, this team would review the quality of work done by VBA employees at the National Personnel Records Center and at the VA Records Management Center. The team would continue to randomly select a 3 percent sample of each employee’s completed work products prepared in response to regional office requests. However, unlike the current review, to determine accuracy, the new team would be able to review the actual service record files for all responses selected for review. A quality review specialist position description has been developed, but at the time of our review, implementation milestones for the new system had not been established.

Potential Improvements in Procedures Could Reduce Time Required to Process PTSD Claims of Some Veterans

VBA potentially could improve its procedures and reduce the time required to process some veterans’ PTSD claims. During fiscal years 1999-2004, the number of veterans receiving compensation benefits because of PTSD increased by about 80 percent, from about 120,000 to almost 216,000. VBA potentially could improve its procedures to reduce the time required to process some veterans’ PTSD claims. To verify the occurrence of claimed stressors, regional offices sometimes cannot find needed evidence in the veteran’s personal service records and must turn to information contained in the military historical records of DOD. While regional offices are able to directly access and search an electronic library of such records for many Marine Corps veterans, they must rely on a DOD research organization—the U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center (JSRRC)—to research such records for all other service branches. JSRRC’s average response time to regional office requests for such research approaches 1 year; by contrast, VBA’s average processing time strategic goal for claims involving disability compensation issues is 125 days. The opportunity may exist for VBA to establish an electronic library of DOD military historical records for the other service branches and greatly reduce the time required to process the PTSD claims of many veterans.

According to VBA’s procedures, if the regional office verifies that a PTSD claimant engaged in combat or was a prisoner of war, the claimant’s own personal testimony is sufficient evidence to verify the occurrence of a stressor associated with the combat or the prisoner-of-war experience. Otherwise, the regional office must obtain other credible evidence to verify the claimed stressor. For Marine Corps veterans from the Vietnam era and the Korean conflict, the regional office can electronically view and search a set of compact discs provided by the Marine Corps University Archives. These discs contain Marine Corps historical records for the Vietnam era (1960-1975) and the Korean conflict. Officials of regional offices we visited estimated that, on average, they can perform these electronic searches of Marine Corps records in less than a day. If the regional office cannot find the needed corroborative evidence on the compact disks, the regional office must ask the Marine Corps University Archives to search its records for any evidence corroborating the veteran’s claim, and only if the Marine Corps University Archives cannot find corroboration may the regional office deny the veteran’s PTSD claim.

By contrast, for veterans of armed service branches other than the Marine Corps, DOD has not created an electronic historical library of records that regional offices can search when the veteran’s service medical or personnel records do not provide evidence to verify engagement in combat or to verify the claimed stressor. Instead, VBA’s procedures call for regional offices to ask JSRRC to conduct research of military historical records of the units in which veterans served in order to provide the needed corroboration. Many of the records that JSRRC may search are voluminous, are not stored electronically, and must be searched manually (see app. V for information on such records). After conducting its research, JSRRC provides the regional office a summary of its findings but does not evaluate evidence, render opinions, make conclusions, or decide the merits of a claim. According to its Director, the center has 13 full-time- equivalent employees and a steady backlog of about 4,000 cases, of which about 85 percent come from VBA regional offices; the remaining requests are submitted by individual veterans and veterans service organizations.

In our visit to VBA’s Oakland regional office, we learned that the regional office recently had begun a local initiative in which the regional office had designated three employees who—when other decision-making duties permit—search an electronic library of unclassified historical military records compiled by the Chicago regional office’s military records specialist. According to the Chicago regional office’s military records specialist, several other regional offices also have been provided this electronic library. The Oakland regional office employees doing this research and the Chicago regional office military records specialist stated that they have been able to find sufficient evidence in the electronic library to grant service connection for a substantial portion of PTSD cases that otherwise would have required that the regional office ask the JSRRC to search for evidence corroborating the veteran’s claim. According to these officials, they can complete these searches within a few weeks after being asked to do the search. These regional offices now request searches by JSRRC for PTSD cases only if sufficient evidence cannot be found in the electronic library to grant service connection. The Director of JSRRC told us that such research by regional offices could greatly reduce JSRRC’s backlog of research requests and reduce the average response time, assuming JSRRC’s staffing level remained constant.

A related issue is that some veterans may not be willing to disclose to regional offices certain details needed to process their PTSD claims because the claimed stressful event occurred during classified operations. For example, to alleviate the possibility of such reluctance on the part of hundreds of thousands of veterans who had participated in classified atmospheric atomic testing and possibly been exposed to nuclear radiation, the Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum in 1996 authorizing such veterans to divulge to VA the name and location of their command, duties performed, dates of service, and related information necessary to validate exposure to nuclear radiation. Similarly, in PTSD cases for which regional offices cannot find sufficient evidence in veterans’ service records to grant the claims, if the veterans, because of concerns about classified operation, will not provide the regional office with certain minimum details, the regional office will not be able to submit requests to JSRRC to search military historical records for corroborating evidence. We discussed the classified operations issue with the Director of JSRRC, who stated that he personally had talked with veterans who had directly contacted his organization and who maintained they could not divulge to him the details of their participation in classified operations. He said that after he explained to them that the entire JSRRC staff are DOD employees and have appropriate security clearances, the veterans were willing to provide him with the details needed to conduct searches of DOD records, including any pertinent classified records maintained by DOD. While the extent of the classified problem is unknown, the Director had no objections to regional offices advising veterans to directly contact JSRRC if they are unwilling to disclose sufficient details to the regional office to process their claims because their disabilities allegedly were incurred during classified operations.

Conclusions

VA is responsible for providing reasonable assurance that it is complying with applicable laws and regulations. While VA’s internal assessments indicate that its regional offices generally comply with the requirements of the Veterans Claims Assistance Act for obtaining military service records, VA does not have a systematic quality review program for ensuring the reliability and accuracy of records research done on behalf of regional offices by the VBA unit located at the National Personnel Records Center. As a result, VA cannot reasonably ensure the quality of the research on which regional offices rely to assist many veterans in obtaining service records relevant to their compensation claims.

PTSD claims have been a growing portion of the claims processed by regional offices. Many present challenges in obtaining the evidence needed to process them, resulting in veterans having to wait for long periods for their claims to be decided. VBA’s establishment of a claims-processing timeliness performance goal demonstrates that high-quality service should result not only in correct decisions, but also decisions rendered in a reasonable length of time. The experience of several regional offices suggests that VBA could improve its timeliness in deciding the PTSD claims of many veterans nationwide if VBA systematically utilized an electronic library of historical military records such as the one compiled by the Chicago regional office. The average time for the Joint Services Records Research Center to respond to such requests is about 1 year; by contrast, officials in some regional offices have found that using the online library compiled by the Chicago regional office enabled them to find sufficient evidence in a matter a few weeks to grant the PTSD claims of many veterans.

Recommendations for Executive Action

We recommend that the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs direct the Under Secretary for Benefits to take the following actions.

To adequately ensure the quality of the records research done on behalf of regional offices by the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center, VBA should move forward in implementing a systematic quality review program that evaluates and measures the accuracy of the unit’s responses to all types of regional office research requests.

To improve its timeliness in deciding PTSD claims, VBA should assess whether it could systematically utilize an electronic library of historical military records, such as the one compiled by the Chicago regional office, to identify veterans whose PTSD claims can be granted on the basis of information contained in such a library, rather than submitting all research requests to the Joint Services Records Research Center.

Agency Comments and Our Response

In its written comments on a draft of this report (see app. VI), VA agreed with our findings and concurred with our recommendations. VA stated it had increased the number of VBA quality reviewers at the National Personnel Records Center in order to better ensure the quality of responses provided to regional offices. VA also noted that VBA will determine the feasibility of regional offices’ using other databases to research cases in order to reduce the number of cases sent to the JSRRC. We believe these are positive steps toward ensuring the quality of the records research done by the VBA unit at the National Personnel Records Center and improving timeliness.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce it contents earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days after the date of this report. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, appropriate congressional committees, and other interested parties. The report will also be available at GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions regarding this report, please call me at (202) 512-7215. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. Other contacts and staff acknowledgments are listed in appendix VI.

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

To identify Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) procedures for obtaining relevant military service records, we obtained and analyzed Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) regulations governing the processing of compensation claims; VBA’s written procedures, user guide for the automated system for requesting military records, training materials, and other VBA instructions for directing regional offices’ efforts in obtaining military records; locally written procedures and guides developed by regional offices to direct their employees in obtaining military records; and information electronically available to regional offices through VBA’s internal network.

To gain an operational context for the information obtained from these sources and to obtain stakeholders’ views on the effectiveness of VBA’s procedures for obtaining relevant military service records, we interviewed officials of VA’s Board of Veterans’ Appeals and Office of Inspector General; VBA’s Compensation and Pension Service, Office of Field Operations, Appeals Management Center, Records Management Center, VA Liaison Office at the National Personnel Records Center, and regional offices located in Atlanta, Georgia, Baltimore, Maryland, Oakland, California, and St. Petersburg, Florida; custodians of military records and organizations that research military records on behalf of VBA’s regional offices, including Department of Defense (DOD) U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DOD Joint Requirements and Integration Office, and National Personnel Records Center, which is operated by the National Archives and Records Administration; and veterans’ advocacy groups, including Disabled American Veterans, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, National Veterans Legal Services Program, and state and county veterans service agencies.

As part of our review of the results of VA’s internal assessments of regional offices’ compliance with Veterans Claims Assistance Act requirements for obtaining military service records, we assessed the reliability of fiscal year 2006 data compiled by VBA from its Systematic Technical Accuracy Review (STAR) program for regional office decisions involving compensation issues. In earlier GAO work on STAR data reported for fiscal year 2004, we reported that regional offices had failed to send any case files to the STAR unit for hundreds of cases randomly selected for quality review, which meant the possibility existed that if the STAR unit had actually been able to review the files for these cases, the accuracy scores for some individual regional offices could have been lower than those reported for fiscal year 2004. Subsequently, the STAR unit began tracking the receipt of cases randomly selected for review. For our current work, we followed up with the STAR unit to determine the extent to which regional offices now send to the STAR unit all cases selected for quality review. We obtained data from the STAR unit and concluded that the numbers of cases requested, received, and reviewed for the first half of fiscal year 2006 provided nationwide data that were sufficiently reliable for our reporting purposes. Even so, the STAR unit did not receive about 6 percent of the cases selected for review during the first half of fiscal year 2006; therefore, because the STAR unit might have found additional VCAA development errors if it had had the opportunity to review these cases, the percentage of cases actually containing Veterans Claims Assistance Act (VCAA) development errors may have been larger than indicated by the fiscal year 2006 data reported by the STAR unit.

Also, as part of our review of VA’s internal assessments of regional offices’ compliance with VCAA requirements for obtaining military service records, we assessed the reliability of data recorded in the Veterans Appeals Control and Locator System (VACOLS) by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals on the results of its reviews of veterans’ appeals on compensation decisions made by regional offices. We obtained data as of January 31, 2006, on all compensation cases decided by the board since November 1, 2004, when the board began recording in VACOLS whether its remands of decisions to VBA for rework were due to regional office deficiencies. To assess the reliability of the VACOLS data, we interviewed knowledgeable board officials, performed electronic testing of pertinent VACOLS data elements, and reviewed existing information about the data and the system that produced them. We determined that the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report. We analyzed these data to create summary statistics on the disposition of compensation cases and issues decided by the board.

Appendix II: Overview of Military Service Records

VBA’s regional offices face a complex task in obtaining veterans’ military service records because (1) service records consist of numerous types of records that can originate from numerous sources within or outside DOD, (2) the process for collecting and storing service records has varied substantially for different groups of veterans over time, (3) service records cannot always be found at the expected storage locations, and (4) the service records of many veterans were destroyed by a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center, a primary repository for service personnel and medical records.

Service Records Are Numerous and Can Originate from Numerous Sources

The cumulative service medical records and service personnel records of individual service members contain numerous types of records that can originate in varying organizations and geographic locations of DOD’s activities as service members migrate from assignment to assignment during their military service (see table 3).

Process for Collecting and Storing Service Records Varies Substantially for Different Groups of Veterans

Historically, when service members separated from active duty, all DOD service branches forwarded all service medical records and service personnel records to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. However, beginning in the early 1990s, separation point military installations began sending service medical records to VA’s Records Management Center, also located in St. Louis. The timing of this changeover varied among service branches, but as of May 1998, all branches had begun sending service medical records to the VA Records Management Center for service members who are discharged from active duty and have no remaining military reserve or National Guard obligation (see table 4, col. 2). Also, in 1996, the Navy became the first DOD service branch to store service personnel records electronically in optically imaged files, which permitted the Navy to discontinue sending these records to the National Personnel Records Center. As of November 2005, all DOD service branches were storing service personnel records electronically and had discontinued sending such records to the National Personnel Records Center (see table 4, col. 3).

When service members have military reserve or National Guard obligations remaining at the time of their release from active duty, the service branches may not route their service records in the same way that they route the records of those who do not have such an obligation when released from active duty. For service members who still have reserve or guard obligations at the time of their release, the disposition of their service records varies depending on their service branch, whether their obligation is a reserve versus guard obligation, and whether or not they are assigned to an active unit at the time of release from active duty.

VA and DOD jointly initiated a Benefits Delivery at Discharge program that enables service members still on active duty to file disability compensation claims within 6 months before separating from active military duty. Under this program, VBA arranges for a physical examination of the claimant, and the service branch provides a VBA liaison with a copy of the claimant’s service medical records. The liaison sends these records to one of the two VBA regional offices (Winston-Salem and Salt Lake City) that process all claims filed under this program. The regional office prepares a rating decision prior to the claimant’s discharge from active duty, and after the claimant’s discharge, the service branch sends the regional office a copy of the claimant’s DD Form 214 (Report of Release from Active Military Service), and the regional office immediately authorizes benefits. As of April 2005, 141 military installations worldwide were participating in the Benefits Delivery at Discharge program, and in fiscal year 2004, and VBA processed 39,000 claims under this program. Additionally, if a service member not participating in this program submits a VA disability claim form to his or her service branch before separating from active duty, the service branch retains the claim form until the individual separates from active duty and then forwards his or her claim form, DD Form 214, and service medical records to the regional office having jurisdiction over the individual’s permanent address.

Veterans’ Service Records Cannot Always Be Found at Expected Storage Locations

To request veterans’ service records, regional offices rely primarily on a VBA system known as the Personnel Information Exchange System (PIES). This system provides regional offices with a menu of record request codes, each of which is defined in terms of the types of service records and/or information being requested by the regional office. On behalf of the regional offices that input such requests into the PIES system, the VA Records Management Center prints and mails requests to custodians of records maintained in paper form, and the PIES system electronically routes requests to custodians of service personnel records maintained in optically imaged files. However, for a variety of reasons, the custodians whom regional offices expect to be in possession of requested records cannot always provide the records (see fig. 1).

Fire in 1973 Destroyed the Military Service Records of Many Veterans

The service records of many older veterans were destroyed by a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center. The fire destroyed the records of approximately 80 percent (16 million to 18 million) of the Army veterans who served during November 1912 through January 1, 1960, and the records of 75 percent of the Air Force veterans with surnames Hubbard through Z who were discharged between September 25, 1947, and January 1, 1964, and were not in a retired or reserve status at the time of the fire. For some of these veterans, the National Personnel Records Center has resources that can help reconstruct some of their service medical information. For example, the center has Army morning (sick) reports for November 1912 to December 1974 and Air Force morning reports for September 1947 to June 1966. Also, in 1988, the National Personnel Records Center obtained magnetic tapes containing limited information extracted by the Surgeon General’s Office from about 10 million hospital admission records for veterans admitted to military hospitals during 1942-1945 and 1950-1954.

Another alternative is for VA to ask the veteran’s service branch to search sick logs, morning reports, and records of military organizations, hospitals, and infirmaries. Other alternative sources for medical information can include statements from service medical personnel; buddy certificates or affidavits; state or local police accident reports; employment physical examinations; medical evidence from hospitals, clinics, and private physicians that may have treated the veteran during or soon after separation; letters written by the veteran during service; photographs taken during service; pharmacy prescription records; and insurance examinations.

Appendix III: VA’s Disability Compensation Claims and Appeals Process

Regional office obtains evidence for claim

For each contested issue, board makes one of three decisions, as shown below (or)

Board denies the benefits requested by the veteran (or)

VBA obtains more evidence but denies the requested benefits and resubmits the contested issue to the board for a final decision (or)

Appendix IV: Web Sites Listed in the PTSD Rating Job Aids Section of VBA’s Internal Network

Unit Citation and Campaign Participation Credit Register (January 1960- September 1987)

Appendix V: Types of Records Researched by DOD’s U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center

Appendix VI: Comments from the Department of Veterans Affairs

Appendix VII: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Staff Acknowledgments

The following individuals made important contributions to the report: Irene Chu, Assistant Director; Marta Chaffee; Martin Scire; Ira Spears; Vanessa Taylor; and Walter Vance.