In the News

The Little Rock Veterans Affairs office has been found to have changed the dates on disability and other claims, making them appear more recent and leading to delays in processing that in some cases were more than a decade old.

A report from a VA inspector says officials continued to use the practice months after a scandal broke about the systematic date changes at other regional offices.

That scandal exposed date changes that were leading some veterans to not get timely medical care, and in rare instances led to their death.

View the report here.

Regional officials say they tried to follow conflicting directions from higher-ups in Washington after the scandal came to light.

"When you read the report you see that the V-A regional office in Little Rock followed the guidance that we were given from the V-A central office," said Lisa Breun, director of the VA's Little Rock regional office. "Immediately upon suspension of that guidance we stopped using it."

The report points out that staff at the Little Rock office tried to make sure some four dozen cases didn't get lost in the shuffle. They developed a spreadsheet to keep track of them, but the report also faults those staffers, saying that plan didn't help get those old claims expedited.

Most of the cases were disability claims that needed to be rated. They remained in limbo for an average of almost two years. But included on the spreadsheet was one case that was nearly 20 years old. The date change made it appear the claim had just been made 14 days earlier. Another 16-year-old non-rating case was changed to a 'discovery' date that was 16 days old.

Breun calls those two cases unfortunate mistakes that can happen in an agency that helps a quarter-million veterans in Arkansas. She also says the 48 cases in question have now been cleared.

The investigator is recommending that all regional offices stop going by guidance the previously allowed for date changing.

Meanwhile, Congressman French Hill is questioning a pattern of "negligent behavior throughout the VA system." The Republican from Little Rock issued a statement saying the regional office in his district was not immune to "egregious instances of data manipulation" and called for more accountability.

Congressman French Hill released this statement in regards to the findings:

"For almost a year, the American people have witnessed a disturbing pattern of negligent behavior throughout the entire VA. Yesterday's report confirms that the Little Rock Regional Office is not immune to the systemic and reckless conduct of some VA employees. These egregious instances of data manipulation can only occur in an environment lacking any real measures of accountability. I am committed to working with my colleagues in Congress and the Arkansas Delegation to ensure that VA leadership does right by our Nation's heroes by utilizing every resource and authority they have to ensure this disservice to our veterans is stopped once and for all."

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