I'm 50, been to the doctor an average amount, and I have no idea where most of my medical records are located.

I'm 62. My records are scattered over four cities, and probably a dozen seperate offices and clinics.

I was retired from the USAF with a disability. I've seen my VA medical files and they are several of those brown folders thick - literally thousands of pages.

All of these files should be created digitally....save a damn forest, filing space (building cost, paper cost, file cabinet cost, folder cost, etc.) and Building space.

My dog's veterinarian has everything on computer. When we go for appointments at the VA, the doc is looking at your lab results from 1 hour prior---do why not digitize the entire record? The fire in 1973 destroyed many military personnel files. Back the files up offline and it's a no brainer.

You have to wonder who the bureaucrat is they hired to create this mess. A political appointee?

Instead of sending Israel billions a year they should be paying us.

Mike in Delray

"At the VA's Winston-Salem Regional Office in North Carolina, an estimated 37,000 claims folders had been stored on top of file cabinets,"

You ain't seen nothin' yet....Just wait till there are 30,000,000 new people on ObamaCare....Will make the problems at the VA look small...

To all the Vets....Thank-you for your service....you deserve better than this....Mike

Mike, that's a lame rant. All of my healthcare comes from the VA and it's far superior to anything that I've experienced in the private sector. Healthcare should not be for profit--ever. Vets don't get hit with bankrupting bills from medical care. How about every citizen have the same. I'm no better than them, as a Vet. Get those insurance companies out of the picture and watch medical care costs go down and people live a better quality life.

sandtrich,

You got that right. My private doctors practice has no file cabinets. All records are stored in open shelving along the wall.

I'm 58 and an expert in business process engineering and document imaging. Hire me.

If anyone in charge manages to read this, it's time to go digital. There are scanners that scan the documents by pages really fast and also organize them on the computer.

This paired with a proprietary or already established database would be ideal. If the scanner program was connected to the database management program so that the process could be automatically they could clean up that mess fast and put temps to work!

Have these people heard about the "scanner" or the "cloud."

Guys the files are still sitting there because the cost is so much to digitize them. I'd bet you could shred a huge amount of them because many of those files are on people who are now deceased.

Awesome. My Dad, a Korean War vet, is 79 and at the stage of life where we're about to approach the VA for his continuing care benefits.

And, wait for it ...... right here in North Carolina!

I already can see how well he, and his file, and his claims, will be treated. Awesome.

And no, DB, not all or even many are deceased; you're hypothesizing. They fought for us. I'll be fighting for him. Are you just a sideline critic, or a participant??

The entire medical profession seems to have missed the computer revolution of the 1980's.

This is sad. Just sad.

.

People, wake up, the article ways they can't afford to process them. Add this mess to the crumbling roads and bridges we have to clean up. We have the lowest tax rates we've ever had, especially for the top brackets. Maybe it's time to rethink that? Those tax breaks for the "job creators" were supposed to create jobs. We've had more then ten years of the tax breaks, where are the jobs? Where is the infrastructure investment? It's time to let the change begin instead of burying our heads in the sand.

Jon - There has been a failure to trickle. We sent up a flood and the "job creators" held it in a huge reservoir and didn't trickle as promised.

The pile up of work at the VA is due to a trickle deficiency.

The lack of jobs is due to a trickle deficiency.

The budget deficit is due to a trickle deficiency.

The national debt is due to a trickle deficiency.

A trickle deficiency tax will fix that. We just calculate each taxpayer's after-tax funds available to trickle (FAT) less their job creation activities. Any excess FAT gets taxed.

Or we could just increase their tax rate back to where it should be so we don't have to monitor their trickle deficiency.

Typical government operation. And the libtards want bureaucrats like these to control the healthare of 300 million Americans.

The people who parrot the tired old "raise taxes!" mantra still don't get it. The more money government gets, the more it spends. It's time to make some serious cuts in federal government. Our nation is broke, and yet we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year on porkulus, interventionalism overseas, and interest on debt we already have. Enough is enough.

Six years ago, I requested copies of my 1990-2000 VA medical records and have still not received them despite repeated inquiries. I think I see my stack of files on top of those filing cabinets!

FlatIron - pay attention now, The military is now and always has been a "government operation". "Bureaucrats like these" control the healthcare of 23 million veterans. The people who "parrot the tired old raise taxes" are the ones who are trying to get the job done. IT IS STUPID to stand there and say that when a job NEEDS to be done that the funds should not be dedicated to GETTING THE JOB DONE. If there isn't enough funding, dump the pork and raise taxes to GET the job done.

Don't like the interest on the borrowed money that is TRYING to GET THE JOB DONE? Raise taxes so there is enough money to DO THE JOB without borrowing! (No brainer there!)

The "trickle deficiency", according to this article began waaaay back in 2005. Pick up the phone and call your Congressmen & Representatives and DEMAND the funding happen! A declaration of war isn't just about weapons costs. There are long term price tags. You are looking at just one of them. The nation is "broke" because we REDUCED our income AFTER the expenses were made or contracted.

Jon, they're lying. If they have 1000 bucks they can buy a commercial grade scanner and pay a few people 8 bucks an hour to scan. Then the images can be stored with Iron Mountain who specializes in this very thing. I used to work for a municipality that did this very thing. They could do it on a broke city budget.

Grandma the problem with simply raising the taxes to get out of the debt is the govt keeps growing and growing and growing, because of those on BOTH sides. Try to justify raising taxes on those already struggling while giving billions in foreign aid to Countries that hate us. Or with the countless stories about govt waste and spending. Thats why the govt hasnt raised taxes yet, they know we'll pay more attention to the cash flow and some of them will be in big trouble.

I wouldn't assume that they haven't considered scanning these documents and are prevented from doing so by some sort of privacy law, procedure, etc. that would take an act of Congress to authorize - and since getting anything through Congress is impossible at this point... There might even be rules against storing them in a proprietary electronic format, thus necessitating the development of a special image file type.

Jon, they're lying. If they have 1000 bucks they can buy a commercial grade scanner and pay a few people 8 bucks an hour to scan. Then the images can be stored with Iron Mountain who specializes in this very thing. I used to work for a municipality that did this very thing. They could do it on a broke city budget.

I also suspect it would be a little more expensive than $1000 plus $8 an hour - the terrabytes of storage capacity and the server hardware to be able to access them on demand isn't cheap. Doable - absolutely. Doable on a shoe-string budget - not likely. (I suspect that the volume of paper the VA would need to process makes the volume of paper just about any municipality would need to process look teensy.)

Emm no. We processed thousands of invoices/files/ documents/ checks/ reconciliations/ entries/ etc daily. On a Canon scanner that was not expensive in the slightest. Like I said you dont need huge servers, Iron mountain is set up for jobs like this.

Yes, they can digitize them. It's not that hard. It's simple record keeping. You/they can hire just a few people, and that can be their job. It's job creation, and it serves an excellent purpose.

We did it in our office. We process and do the bookkeeping for a state agency. In Ohio, we have 88 counties. Each month we had a file about 3 inches thick for each county (some more, some less, but average 3"). In just a couple of years, we had filled every file cabinet in the building (and then some.) Smarter heads prevailed, and we convinced management that scanning the documents would be a time and space saver, and save on storage, too. It took us about a year to get all the back paperwork scanned and filed, but we worked at it. (Figure 88 counties times 12 months times 5 years! equal 5280 files [I hope I did my math right].). That's just one small agency in Ohio, and we did it with our current staffing. All the backups are stored in one small file cabinet, and a secondary set is kept off site in case of a disaster. We also have the server backup. If I need a record, it's very easy to access in just moments.

The VA could do this, too. It's not that hard. We are not organizational geniuses, but one person (in our office) was selected to set up the access process, and it was consistently carried out. Our cost? What does a couple of boxes of CDs cost? Time? We spread it out over our general work time when we had a few down minutes here and there.

The VA has a much larger staff and ability to handle the paperwork. What needs to be done right now is have a system set up from this date forward that all entry is now digital. Back files can be added/scanned/updated as the work progresses. I think this is more of a bureaucracy problem than an actual work problem. The mess can be fixed. It just needs someone to grab the scanner by the horns.

(As for a cost-saving factor, how much will it cost to replace the building that collapses from too much file storage versus just scanning, shredding and recycling the paper?)

For an agency that budgeted $20M for conferences and supposedly spent $100M, they could have purchased a whole lot of storage pace, storage cabinets, personal, scanners - whatever they needed.

Uh, Steve, as a disabled vet drawing a small compensation (and a former veterans service officer), I don't want any more losers screwing up my file. One of the major problems is the number of affirmative action hires currently in the VA. In St Louis a couple of years ago, one genius shredded several thousand active disability claims because he was overwhelmed by the task of processing them. He seriously thouhgt that nobody would notice!

The other problem is that a large number of vets are filing flaky claims (particularly for PTSD) just on the chance that they might land a monthly check for a nonexistent condition.

No, Spider, because that would work....perfectly, and when has this government EVER done anything that Worked?

How about hiring some of us Vets who just might need a few more dollars. Start there then address those on unemployment... Oh wait wasn't that how they went about reducing the deficit... by removing low end government employees. Body count looks great on paper until we realize that all the bosses with the big dollars don't do much but shuffle emails.

NO STEVE, ... simply because the FILING sysstem used by uncle Sammy & co, needs to be shipped over to CHINA along with our 55% interest payments (fer collateroll) >>> as our RATINGS, ... have slipped to LOUSY, ... frum just BAAAD,...... uno-it-2.

This is not a matter of folders not being filed. It is a matter of no place to store the folders themselves. Hiring indigents would not solve that problem.

Geez Steve, and just who would pay for that. What we need is more F-35's. There is no mission for them. but the people who run the outfits that make them sure are a generous lot come election time.

They also seem to think that this veterans business is a lot of socialist crap and are trying hard to find a way to get rid of it.

Goddammit- The only legitimate function of government is to keep the poor from killing the rich and the poor better get damn well used to paying for it. The wealthy sure aren't going to kick in for it after all it's their money. Job creators dontcha know!

For $405,0000 I could buy a couple computers, a commercial scanner, file it all, and buy a vacation home.

Why not do what insurance companies and hospitals etc do ...1. they scan the info into the computer 2. then store files offsite as necessary that are actually retrievable. Another thing is aren't then the old paper files shredded after 5 years or so if I am not mistaken?

Perhaps they could give each person a copy of their file too. Now a days radiology etc folks give you a copy of your films etc as many have gone digital, and you can get a copy of your medical records from your doctor etc.

It behoves the person sending in a claim to make a copy of the completed claim and any other supporting doccuments/reports etc and keep for yourself. This way if the claim is not completed in a timely fashion then you can actually send them another copy of what you submitted before. Keep a record of who you spoke to on what date etc for future reference.

How about if you go to the VA office to file a claim, after that is done they give you a copy of your 'paperwork' then and there. Banks are doing paperless also, so are many other businesses where they do have a lot of clients, so why not the VA? Many things are done online these days. Back in the day they used to put doccs on microfisch or whatev it was called as these took up less space. Now in the 21st century these folks are having difficulty storing doccs and actively working these claims because they cannot seem to get a workable computer system in place?

Imagine a man landed on the moon, there is a space station, and now machinary was landed on Mars, we have satelites in space yet the VA does not have a better system for their files etc even with the massive Defense budget?

It is easier if the doccs are on the computer where it can be pulled up by name and or number. It is easier to check to see if all the necessary doccs have been received and what work or determination has been made so far too. Plus each time the records have been viewed a short dated note is often made at that time stating the usual who what when etc and outcome.

They will need to get a system that is upgradable as necessary in the future and can interface with other systems. Odd that this is happening, when it seem that some VA hospitals for example are already computerized when it come to the medical records and doccumentation at the bedside etc.

Is the problem in North Carolina happening at other sites too?.... Considering the amount of health insurance companies and businesses that are in those areas perhaps they can get some insight into how these companies do their storage etc. They will no doubt need to get an IT dept set up too if they do not already have one.

Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid do not seem to be having these difficulties. But then one cannot keep defunding and cutting staffing and expect the outcome to be any different.

Wasn't it noted that over 500thousand federal/govt employees have been laid off so far in an attempt to 'decrease the size of government', you know the shrink the size of govt thing....? LOL

Many vets are returning home and many are already home and are looking for jobs. Medical claims review and reconsideration is not the easiest thing to do as you do need to have a healthcare background and the appropiate active license in the healthcare arena like nursing, but the other clerical part is equally labour intensive. Don't you have to have a licensed in Medical records technology/Health Informantion Technology to work in the Medical records department, and to do the necessary coding etc?

Oh well you get what you are willing to put out monies for, don't you....

Peace.....

They should ship older files to the National Archives which manages tens of millions of documents which are at least digitally cataloged for easy management. DoD military medical records are usually sent there, so why not VA records?

It doesn't make sense that we can go to war, not pay for it, and not even consider the cost of taking care of veterans when they return. Congress is happy to spend money on military tanks that the Pentagon says they don't need or want, but won't give the VA the resources it needs to take care of its veterans, including the office space, computer systems and personnel to file and manage the claims. Ridiculous.

Steve, stop making sense. Bad Steve....bad...

Meanoldbastard,

Around here, and in most places, the Tea Party wants empty building sold off. They also want to "starve the beast" by underfunding administration of federal departments. What I see is over-concentration of responsibility is this facility. Couldn't each base have had a seperate facility with seperate staffs. Wait, the might have led to wasteful processes like time review of claims, and legitimate investigation of those claims. A successful program, which cannot be allowed.

MoldyBastid, YU are delusional methinks. TP has nothing to dow/GSA,DOD,BIG BRO,etc.

Meanold... it does not matter how much space you have to store the files, if you do not have the humans to do the work of reviewing and actually filing those files and keeping up with all the claims already there and coming in every day.

Plus if the system was already computerized with the records scanned into the computers, then there would be no necessity to keep those paper files onsite taking up valuable office space. You need people with the necessary knowledge to actually work/review those claims, you know like nurses, doctors, pharmacists and the like when dealing with disability claims. Plus you need clerical staff to do the scanning, filing etc. It is labour intensive.

The T'repcons can continue to get their knickers in a twist all they want and continue to call for defunding and cuts and smaller govt, because this is the result when you don't have enough people to do the work. Some automation is possible but it takes humans to do the claims and reviews no matter what.

This country is getting more messed up because of short sighted people and nincompoops spewing forth rhetoric they do not even understand not realizing that they are the ones being hurt. Continue believing the crap you are being sold by the t'repcons and fauxs.

Pity is that you T'folks are trying to take the rest of us into perdition and regression with you.

This is what happens when Congress buys planes and tanks that the Pentagon does not want instead of filing cabinets, storage facilities and computerized storage that the VA begs for.

Filing cabinet makers don't have the ability to pay off, er, lobby Congress like Lockheed and Boeing.

I'm not disagreeing, but looking at those stacked, dusty, unkempt, scattered records, I'm not thinking about file cabinets, scanners, digital imaging, cloud services, political parties, lobbyists, or power lunches on K Street.

I'm thinking each is a request from an American who once wore a uniform; who served all the rest of us; who bled red, white and blue; and whose files were straight, secure and in top form whenever and wherever they served.

Shame on the rest of us, shame on the VA, and shame on its overseers -- from both sides of the political aisle. This is second only to the roof and ceilings at Walter Reed Army Hospital collapsing in on hospitalized vets there a few years ago.

Your full of it. I can site just as many (or more) examples of the private sector screwing thing up just as bad as the Federal Government.

marlene, 101, You are either a Govt emplyee, Govt boss, or mebbe just a plain old WANNABEE-1.

marlen..right back at you buddy....now what do you suppose would happen if a hospital had kept the records of say....Medicare recipients in such poor shape? The federal government would fine them or withhold payment.

So who fines the federal government when they don't seem to be able to function? Our veterans deserve better. Perhaps they should outsource their filing to a private company who could provide responsible labor, perhaps as suggested above hiring returning vets, to keep the filing organized and in an accessible location...without putting the employees who occupy the lower floors of the building at risk.

I don't get your pov...when it has been proved over and over that our Government is a poor custodian of the American people it is always compared to some mythical private sector phantom. So let's go apples to apples...do you suppose the IRS has a nonfunctional administrative cluster mess? No they don't because they have to be responsible to Congress. Unfortunately, the VA seems to be relegated to the same class as the Post Office. It is sad and certainly pitiful.

txmom, the government is as effective as the private sector any-day, I've worked in both. have you heard of social security, medicare, the military, etc. as a disabled veteran i see the VA as a purposely designed obstacle. remember the atomic exposure problems, agent orange exposure, gulf war syndrom? the health types have been fine, its the VA benefits administration group who are in no hurry.

txmom,

The real problem is less one of staff or diligence, but as the article pointed out, a lack of funding for the required cabinetry and storage space. The floor loading of the building, due to the concentration of files, was compromising the lives of the workers and the integrity and security of the files. The resultant crisis resulted in $439k for new file cabinetry placed in the basement to store the overflow. But this will be a temporary solution as more vets qualify for benefits, adding more files. Ultimately, the VA will have to further decentralize, just to keep file sizes manageable and caseloads humanly possible to manage. And that would be true of either public or private management.

BTW, your comment on the Post Office misses several key points. Having dealt with both the USPS and UPS for mailing legal documents, the UPS has always been $5 - $10 more expensive for letter delivery. Further, if UPS misses a delivery to me requiring a signature, it's a 90mi round trip to pick it up at their facility. And UPS offers no drop boxes or small town civic centers. It is also not required to prefund its employee pension fund for 70 years, providing Congress a $5billion per year slush fund. Actually, the majority of UPS employees are part-time working less than 25 hr/week. And most small UPS parcels are now delivered under contract to the more efficient USPS.

This is simply another example of not being able to fund something adequately because the masses insist on tax cuts for the tax brackets they have no hope of joining, all the time mistakenly thinking those Republican tax breaks are meant for them. If you want it to work, fund it. The solution is easy; don't vote Republican ever, and a more sensible second party will arise, one that isn't wrapped in TP.

Bill Marvell..perhaps we could consider the problem one of budgeting....The individual who is charged with budgeting for that facility was not do a very good job. If the facility manager cannot manage to budget for simple items like office equipment then what other problem plague that facility? If he is not fighting to get the funds he needs to adequately deal with something as simple as filing then why is he/she in that position in the first place? Mediocrity as a federal employee motto is getting tiresome. The inept approach to managing this facility is certainly shining a bright light on the low standards of hiring at the federal level. This problem began in 2005...if the individual in charge of the facility had adequately budgeted then that would break down to roughly 58,000 a year. It is a matter of prioritizing line items in a budget. Seems there is a bigger problem at this facility than filing records...perhaps someone needs to go and audit their books.

Jon...Oh no it must be the Republicans fault. And yet we have a Democrat in the White House and they are the majority in the Senate.

So you're saying that it's the Democrats who forced through those tax breaks to the richest Americans ruining our economy and letting our country crumble? Was it a Democrat who cancelled American research in alternative energy in the 1980s when we were way ahead, so that now other countries are getting the jobs that industry is creating? Was it a Democrat who invaded Iraq with the slimmest of pretexts and wasted trillions of our dollars?

Those are years and years worth of VA records piling up, and it began long before Obama was president. It was Bush who underfunded and trashed the VA, insulting our veterans.

The government is a firm believer that if it isn't in triplicate on paper it doesn't exist. That and experience has shown that that outsourced information is rarely in a compatible format as REQUIRED by government standards and some how magically ends up in the public domain. How about insourcing for a change and keeping medical records electronically like the VA is doing NOW instead of converting all that paper after the fact?

I am on month #15 waiting for my claim to be processed, I was told it will take up to two years.

They lost mine - to include my military treatment records. That is effective for them - if there are no military treatment records then it is almost impossible to prove an injury occured in service. I really liked my letter that said they lost my file and supporting documentatin the records center sent once I was medically retired. After 8 years, I finally was awarded service connection.

Oh my God, gentlemen. I am so sorry to read your ordeals. My brother's active duty, 23-year Army vet; my father is a Korean War vet. It's appalling, inexcusable.

A terrible commentary on our country that while thanking you for your service and sacrifices, we have to ask for your patience. Just for a few years, while we try to get our @!$%# together.

But thank you.

Ask the House why they won't fund the VA adequately to address the storage, personnel and claims processing facility sufficiently to get this mess cleared up. Don't be afraid to make that call. Tell them to park the 3, 000 Abrams tanks they funded, but the Army does not need or want, in the parking lot of the overburdened regional offices. Store the files there until the digital storage is complete. That way the taxpayers and veterans are getting something back for the 3 billion being spent on these useless tanks.

Mike - Good luck to you on your wait for your claim. 10 months - you've only just begun. My poor husband has been waiting for 9 years. He has been through the entire process and finally received a remand in June 2011!! more than a year ago - and that is with a court ordered expedite. Rather than all this commotion about storing the files - I say let's demand that the claims get processed and settled. The way that the Winston Salem Region service office serves our Veterans is a crying shame and a disgrace to this country.

It would. Unfortunately the Tea Party Repbulicans have dictated that we have to give the money to pay for them to billionaires instead. Tax breaks to those that don't need them have consequences.

Jakesmomma Hang in there keep with it.