Department of Veterans Affairs officials in the agency’s Little Rock, Ark., facility changed the dates on patients’ healthcare claims to conceal the fact that veterans had waited up to 20 years to learn if they would receive benefits for their injuries.
The VA inspector general’s discovery, made public Thursday, showed officials at the Little Rock regional office continued to tamper with patient records even after the practice had sparked national outrage as the VA scandal exploded.
In July 2014, the inspector general received an anonymous tip that staff at the VA office in Little Rock, Arkansas were changing the dates on veterans’ claims.
“The complainant alleged that adjusting the dates of claims was done to give the appearance that [the Veterans Benefit Administration] was making more progress than it actually had in eliminating its backlog of disability claims,” the report said.
After appearing at the Little Rock office unannounced to investigate the allegations, the inspector general discovered a spreadsheet with 48 unprocessed claims from May 2013 to June 2014.
Staff had adjusted the dates on all 48 claims, the report said.
Among them was a disability claim that was 20 years old, but had been doctored to appear just 14 days old.
Another claim that was marked as being six days old had actually languished in the VA office for 16 years.
An average of a year and eight months had passed between the day veterans filed their disability claims and the day officials “discovered” them among VA files.
For all other types of claims, veterans had been forced to wait an average of five years and nine months.
Replacing the actual date of veterans’ health insurance claims with a significantly more recent date prevented staff from addressing older claims with urgency, the report said.
The findings at the VA’s regional office in Little Rock mirror those discovered at agency facilities around the country in what was last year revealed to be a systematic scheme of manipulation and cover-ups.
The Washington Examiner published a five-part series on such abuses, “Making America’s Heroes Wait,” in February 2013 that highlighted the problem for Congress and the public.
