Date: 1988-06-28
Speaker: RAYMOND J. VOGEL (republican)
Chamber: S

Chief Benefits Director Department of Veterans Benefits. Veterans Administration. Washington. DC. DEAR MR. VooEL A new records souve will soon be available at our National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) for reconstructing medical data for many veterans of tile . World War II and Korean Conflict periods. As you may be aware. the fire at NPRC in July 1973 destroyed the major portion of records of Army Military personnel for the period 1912 through 1959 and records of Air Force personnel with surnames Hubbard through Z for the period 1947 through 1903. The new soulce consists of a collection of computer magnetic tapes that were created by tile National Research Council (NRC). a private organization. from admissions punch cards prepared by the Office of the Surgeon General. Department of the Army. (The original punch cards have been destroyed.) The 91 tapes contain Information for the years .19421945 and 19501954 on a large sampling of Army patients admitted to Army medical treatment facilities during those time periods. It is estimated that the tapes contain approximately 10 million records: however. an unknown number of these will be multiple entries for the same individual. The data Includes various personal Indentifylng and medical treatment factors such as serial number. grade or rank. age. race. length of service. date and place of adnission. type of case (disease. nonbattle and battle injuries. battle casualty). diagnosis. operation. circumstances surrounding injury. type and date of disposition. etc. Although the Individuals names are not included. positive identification can be made through the service number. Although copies of the tapes finally are being duplicated and released to NARA by NRC. following authorization from tile Department of the Army. certain access problems prevent us from immediately using tile information. 1. Format. Each tape must be analyzed to determine its format. then reformatted to be compatible with NPRCs system. Sonic of tile tapes have been converted to ninetrick tape compatible with NPRCs system. lluo.ever. the information on the tapes is in at least 10 different formats. 2. Access. The data must be crossrefer. enced by service number and service code td NPRCs Auxiliary File Index to facilitate inquiries. Furthermore. the information must be arranged in service. number sequence to support generation of the computer output microfilm listing of each record which will be needed to produce the final "drcoded" report on the individual. ProduCtio. of tile final report is dependent upon pc software which will decode each data element In the record(s) on the requested indivihual. Unfortunately. it appears that separete pc programs will be required for each sagment of the file. The system will work as follows: An inquiry by service number to the registry system will generate a "hit" on the Finding Aid Report (NA Form 13096) for eatih relatel record on the microfiche listing see attachment 1). To interpret the coded record. a blowback copy is made of the microfiche page (sec attachment 2). The codes are then entered to screen format which Is part f a personal computer program. The pe sotware quickly interprets each code and generates a printout (see attachment 3). The "hits" will also appear on the automated VA 3101 (see attachment 4). So far. NPRC has analyzed and reformatted the 1944 collection and added it to the registry index. (Approximately 3.4 million records pertaining to 2.4 millibn veterans are included in this first group.) Sets of computer output microfiche (COM) listing each coded record on the 1944 file also have been produced. The pc program has been written. NPRC expects to received tapes from NRC for all years except 194243 by the end of June. Indeed. we are not certain when we will receive the tapes containing data for 194243. It is our understanding that NRC is experiencing problems with their format. Reformatting of the other tapes by NPRC can be affected In a matter of weeks. development of the pe software within two months (i.e.. every effort will be made by us to expedite this project). Because NPRC has not yet received and added all the files to the registry system. we are extremely concerned that NPRC may be inundated with Inquiries before all of the Information is put into a usable format. It is probable that such a situation would have an equally serious impact on your operations. as claims previously disallowed due to the lack of supporting evidence may be resubmitted In large numbers. In the absence of the complete file. our agencies may be deluged prematurely with request which cannot be properly serviced. It Is our understanding that Ms. Judy Veres of the Compensation and Pension Service and Mr. Gray Cooper of the VA Regional Office in St. Louis met with NPRC officials on Wednesday. June 15 to discuss this matter. We also have been contacted by Mr. lerb Mars of your agency and have scheduled a meeting for June 30. 1988. at 10:00 a.m. to discuss plans for advising veterans. veterans organizations. and tie Congress of this new Information. Clearly. we need to notify these groups as soon as possible. but in some manner which will avoid triggering the undesirable situation drscribed above. You may also wish to consider including a representative from the NRC in the meeting on June 30 to impress on that organization tile importance of completing the transfer of the tapes to NPRC as soon as possible. If you or your staff have any questions concerning this matter. please call Mr. Gregory Pomicter on my staff on 6538388. Sincerely. DAVID F. ParTasoN.