Veterans Affairs Base Case

Organization: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a cabinet-level agency of the U.S. government.

Headquarters: 810 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20420

Phone: (202) 273-5400

Business: To provide American veterans with health and rehabilitation services; employment and educational services; and compensation and benefit payments.

Chief Information Officer: Robert McFarland

Financials: $64 billion budget for 2004 fiscal year; $68 billion requested for 2005 fiscal year.

Challenges: Fully deploy new compensation and pension systems to improve speed and accuracy of claims processing; create two-way, electronic medical-records system with the Department of Defense.

Baseline Goals:

• Cut backlog in unresolved claims, which reached 420,603 at the end of September 2001, to 250,000 claims.
• Reduce the time to process a claim, which was 182 days at the end of September 2003, to 100 days.
• Eliminate the waiting list for vets seeking primary care, from 300,000 in 2001, down to 30,000 earlier this year.