Title: Veterans Benefits--Program to Help Vets with Disabilities Claims
Needs Better Oversight

Description: The Department of Veterans Affairs processed about 2
million disability benefits claims in fiscal year 2023. Navigating the
claims process can be difficult. And veterans may use representatives,
who are accredited by the VA, to help them. But how does the VA oversee
the quality of these services and protect veterans against potential
scammers? We'll find out more from GAO's Elizabeth Curda.

Related work: GAO-25-107211, Veterans Benefits: More Thorough Planning
Needed to Help Better Protect Veterans Assisted by Representatives 

Released: April 2025

{MUSIC}

[Elizabeth Curda:] VA needs additional planning in this really important
program that helps and protects veterans who are applying for disability
benefits.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for
fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs. 
The Department of Veterans Affairs processed about 2 million disability
benefits claims in fiscal year 2023. Navigating the claims process can
be difficult. And veterans may use representatives, who are accredited
by the VA, to help them. But how does the VA oversee the quality of
these services and protect veterans against potential scammers? We'll
find out from GAO's Elizabeth Curda, who has a new report out today on
this topic. Thanks for joining us.

[Elizabeth Curda:] Thanks for having me.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, maybe we can start with what is the role of these
representatives. How do they help veterans?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Well, I think the first thing you have to understand
is that applying for disability benefits from the VA is a very complex
undertaking. And so the role that a representative can play is
essentially they act on the behalf of the veteran when they're applying
for benefits and help them navigate the process. For example, they can
help fill out the paperwork. They can track down medical files. And they
can check in with the VA on the status of the claim throughout the
process, which can take many months.

[Holly Hobbs:] These are not VA employees, right?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Correct. They are private individuals. They can be
employees of a veteran service organization. And these are organizations
like the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They can be
attorneys. They can be paralegals or financial planners, or just people
who advocate for veterans on their own.

[Holly Hobbs:] And how is the VA accrediting or vetting, to use a pun,
how are they vetting, these people to know that they're going to do a
good job?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Well, they take a risk-based approach depending on
the type of representative involved. So, if the representative is from a
veterans' service organization, that organization essentially does the
background checks, the training, and they vouch for their
representatives. And they make sure that they're up to date on their
training and so forth. If you're an attorney, the basic requirement is
that you have to be in good standing with your state bar association.
And then for all the other types of representatives, which VA has a
different name for, they call them claims agents, VA will conduct a
background check and follow up on any red flags that they see, and if
they pass that screening, they are then required to take a written exam.

[Holly Hobbs:] So that kind of is like stuff before you start the job.
The background check to make sure you have all the credentials you need.
What happens when they're on the job? How is VA overseeing the quality
of service?

[Elizabeth Curda:] VSO's are supposed to periodically recertify that
their employees are in good standing--so, you know, that they've taken
the training and still their backgrounds are still okay. And VA does
track this. They can suspend an accreditation if a representative
doesn't keep up with their training. VA also plays a role in
investigating and responding to any complaints about a representative.

[Holly Hobbs:] So what happens if there's a complaint?

[Elizabeth Curda:] It depends. For an accredited representative, VA will
investigate the complaint, see if it holds any water. And they can
revoke the accreditation if they didn't follow the rules. There's
another case, though, where they may get a complaint about someone who
has been representing a veteran who is not accredited. And these
individuals, they could be advertising that they can work the system and
get faster results than an accredited representative will. An
unaccredited representative might try to offer that for a fee or offer a
lot of services the veteran doesn't need sort of packaged in with that
application process. And VA does not have authority to punish the
unaccredited reps who break the rules. They are limited to sending a
cease-and-desist letter, or they might refer those complaints to state
or federal law enforcement.

[Holly Hobbs:] If you're a veteran applying for disability benefits and
you're working with one of these representatives, what's like a red flag
that would tell you maybe this person isn't accredited or maybe this is
a scam?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Well, first of all, if they ask for a fee to file
your initial disability claim, that is illegal. If they think of other
things to charge you for, like financial advice or steering you to
doctors, kind of other things that aren't the filing of the claim. I
mean, I'll give you an example. People reach out to me from time to time
because of my background in disability benefits, and said that their
loved one was going to be applying for disability benefits, and they had
been working with this individual who was going to charge them $500 to
file the initial disability claim. And I had to say, that's a red flag.
They are not allowed to charge to file that initial disability claim. If
your claim is denied and you appeal, an attorney can charge a fee for
that appeal process, which can be lengthy and result in awards, but the
initial disability claim is free.

[Holly Hobbs:] So the VA told us about some challenges they have with
overseeing their program of representatives. What did they tell us?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Well, besides dealing with these unaccredited folks,
the main issues are they're a very small staff. And so they have many
responsibilities to keep up with. And so when they sort of focus on one
thing, there's a backlog of applications to be accredited, so they're
working on the backlog, then maybe they don't have time to do the
checking on the recertifications or the training requirements. So, they
have a hard time dealing with all of their responsibilities. The other
issue is their IT is outdated. And this somewhat contributes to this, to
the issue with resources. They spend a lot of time doing manual data
entry, which takes away from time they have to do the kind of mission
critical things that they're supposed to be doing. 

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] So Elizabeth just told us that representatives play a key
role in helping veterans navigate the claims process for disability
benefits. But that the VA faces some challenges when overseeing the
quality of these services. Elizabeth, what more do we think the VA needs
to do to oversee this program and protect veterans?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Well VA has a good understanding of the challenges
that they face, and they have ideas about ways to address those
challenges. For example, a study of their staff resources that they
need, updating their IT systems. They want to update their rules to
increase those training requirements. But what we found they're
struggling with is planning and implementing the initiatives. And this
is, frankly, a common problem we find at the VA with new initiatives.
Their implementation plans that we reviewed don't follow leading
practices for project management. We found that VA hasn't, for example,
assessed the risks that could affect their plans. They don't fully
identify the resources they need to complete these improvements. And
they don't have timeframes for when the initiatives would be completed.
And there's no indication of how they would monitor progress on these
plans. So, we recommended that they fully apply leading planning
practices to all of these initiatives to improve the probability that
these plans will succeed.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Elizabeth Curda:] Well, VA is taking steps to address the challenges in
this really important program that helps and protects veterans who are
applying for disability benefits. However, VA needs additional planning
to help make these efforts successful.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was GAO's Elizabeth Curda talking about our new
report on VA benefits. Thanks for your time.

[Elizabeth Curda:] Thanks for having me.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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