hello and welcome to another installment of cck live under five my name is brandon piva
and with me is my colleague matt fusco and today we're going to touch on what va's new
automated decision system is and sort of explain the overviews the implementation
and just overall some new aspects of what this is and what this could potentially mean for veterans
so first we'll start by talking about an overview of what this new system is va has recently started
a new initiative to modernize the claims process system and reduce the immense number of backlogs
of claims and appeals that va currently has this new system is aiming to automate the
administrative workflows that va currently has in place in a recent press conference via has said
that they have developed rules and algorithms in order to enhance and translate data into
automated actionable outcomes and processes doing so would allow va to determine the sufficiency or
insufficiency of medical evidence contained in a veteran's file now if this new system deems
that the evidence is sufficient this program is going to pre-populate a rating calculator
and it's also going to draft a proposed rating decision for the veteran's condition now if this
system deems that the evidence is insufficient the system is going to automatically request the
appropriate exams to obtain the necessary medical evidence that is needed to render a final decision
now with these proposed decisions although it's made by an algorithm in a new system it's
essentially sort of a version of a.i these proposed decisions would then go into vbms
for a va rater to review invalidate or promulgate this decision so this system isn't necessarily
the end-all be-all when it comes time to make a decision the decision is sort of rendered as
a suggestion and then it actually goes before a real person who is responsible for reviewing
and implementing this decision now let's talk a little bit about implementation via has created
a model for this automated system based on claims for increased ratings for hypertension
this pilot was originally initiated in december at the boise idaho regional office
and on average they found that decisions for increased ratings for hypertension
have been made in less than one week so now i'm gonna kick it over to my colleague matt and he can
talk about what va's goals are for this new system sure thanks brandon so per va the goal of this new
system is really create a better user experience for employees and veterans alike all the while
while making decisions more accurately fairly and quickly moving forward va hopes to expand
automation in this regard to more conditions for increase we're thinking things specifically like
asthma sleep apnea or prostate cancer and va is also looking at how it would expand
these automated processes for other types of claims such as those related to things like
toxic exposure in those particular types of cases those will involve more elements of evidence um
and a little bit more involvement on that end of things so some questions that we really initially
have to consider are you know how is this new system going to impact veterans specifically
the hope i think per va is to decrease claim timelines however we realize that that errors
could still potentially exist in this system time will really tell here and it's all very new and
very speculative up to this point uh we will be watching these dishes and decisions closely
uh as well as whether the program gets rolled out to more conditions and locations as we've
previously talked about so it's really kind of a work in progress right now it's very new and
we're going to stay tuned to see how this could potentially impact veterans and veterans claims
and that's about that about does it for for this particular topic thanks for joining us
and we will definitely speak more about this topic specifically as new things develop so
stay tuned but again thanks for joining us and be sure to visit our channel for more information
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