VA officials tell House panel steps are reducing 'overdevelopment' that delays disability claims

At a House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee hearing, VA witnesses said the department is taking steps to curb “overdevelopment” — unnecessary requests for medical exams or records that can delay decisions on veterans' disability claims and add cost to taxpayers.

The issue matters because overdevelopment can lengthen wait times for veterans, result in incorrect claim outcomes through avoidable deferrals, and drive government spending on contracted exams. The committee cited a VA Office of Inspector General finding that from April through September 2023 VA paid about $1.4 million for unnecessary exams and noted legislation in Congress, H.R. 2137, the Review Every Veterans Claims Act, aimed at addressing the problem.

Kenneth Smith, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Field Operations and Acting Executive Director for Education Services at the Veterans Benefits Administration, told the subcommittee the VA has pursued three broad changes to reduce overdevelopment: improving decision-support tools, reshaping training, and upgrading the claims-distribution and casework systems.

Smith said the department refreshed a scheduling aid, called the Exam Scheduling Assistant, originally launched in 2023 and updated through the Overdevelopment Reduction Task Force. “Recent enhancements increase the tool's use by 48 and contributes to a reduction in monthly errors cited for exam overdevelopment,” Smith said. He said overdevelopment errors have decreased about 7% in fiscal year 2025 to date compared with fiscal year 2024.

Smith described plans to integrate the scheduling assistant into the Veterans Benefits Management System so claims processors will not need to leave their case environment to use it. He said that upgraded functionality and other error checks are being designed to provide real-time feedback to employees and are scheduled for initial testing in fiscal year 2026.

On the National Work Queue — VA's system for electronically distributing claims across regional offices — witnesses described both problems and fixes. The queue returns claims that were deferred for development to the pool and sometimes routes the same claim to another processor, a pattern that can repeat avoidable errors and extend delays. “We have heard about cases where one claims processor after another makes the same overdevelopment error,” Chairman Littrell said. Kenneth Smith and other VA officials said they are developing reporting and feedback features so employees who previously touched a claim can receive information if that claim later results in an avoidable deferral.

James Swartz, president of AFGE Local 2823, argued for configuring the National Work Queue so a claim remains in a single regional office while it is processed or so previous processors can have claims returned to them, which he said would aid learning and reduce repeated errors.

VA officials also said they are piloting a reporting solution that would notify staff who previously worked on a claim that later resulted in an avoidable deferral, so processors can learn from specific mistakes. Smith said preliminary data analysis for that pilot has been completed and VA will report results to the committee when available.

Committee members pressed for quantitative context. Witnesses testified that VA completed roughly 2.4 million exams in fiscal 2023 and about 3.2 million in fiscal 2024, that the department receives about 10,000 new disability claims per day, and that the national inventory of claims awaiting decisions was about 918,000 at the time of the hearing. Smith said VA has been completing roughly 11,000 claims per day and that the agency projects completing more than 2.5 million claims this year if current productivity holds.

The witnesses identified training reforms implemented after the Overdevelopment Reduction Task Force's recommendations, including smaller class sizes, interactive hands-on modules introduced in June 2024, targeted quality reviews, and additional instruction delivered during a March 20 quality stand-down. VA also reported adding Pact Act-related medical-opinion requirements into training, in response to a prior OIG audit.

On technology, Robert Arefisi, Executive Director for Benefits and Memorial Services in VA’s Office of Information and Technology, and other IT officials described work to add predictive analytics and real-time workload matching to the National Work Queue and to build an interactive error-check function in the Veterans Benefits Management System. Arefisi said those improvements aim to route claims by complexity and employee skill, allow employees to request additional work when they have capacity, and reduce avoidable deferrals through early error detection.

The committee did not adopt legislation or vote on measures at the hearing. VA witnesses committed to providing pilot-study results and to continuing to integrate the scheduling assistant and other tools into VBMS, with testing targeted for fiscal 2026.

Smaller details from the hearing: the VA Office of Inspector General reviewed a portion of fiscal 2023 and found millions spent on unnecessary exams in that period; the Overdevelopment Reduction Task Force produced more than 50 manual updates to guidance; and VA said it is exploring ways to notify every processor who touched a claim that later resulted in an avoidable deferral.

Officials said they will continue to report progress to the committee and that testing and phased rollouts are planned next fiscal year.