Defending Your Custody Agreement: Protecting Your Education Choices

Slow VA Responses? Denials? Get More Evidence And Get Assistance

28 October 2015 by Daryl Young

Veterans Affairs (VA) can be slow to respond. It's a reality that any bureaucratic process deals with, and the slow speed of some VA facilities have been enough to make national headlines. Even if you don't like being at the front of change, there are a few things you could do in the background to support your case without stirring waters, while allowing a legal professional to do the serious talking for you. Take a look at a few options available for veterans waiting on compensation, health care and other system responses.

Calling For Information? Don't Get Frustrated, Get Specific

Although there are times where you just have to wait, if you've been waiting for longer than a month for a response or have health risks that could become worse, don't be patient; be assertive. 

Calling Veterans Affairs offices can yield some answers, but with so many veterans contacting for similar reasons, you may get a standard response that doesn't answer your specific needs. Your paperwork may be in the hands of workers who don't handle customer calls, so you'll need to push a little harder to find out what's going on.

At the first point of contact, ask which office has your paperwork. Even if they can't give you the office's number, if you know which facility is working and what part of the process they're on, you can take your call to a higher level.

The national VA hotline may be the least likely to give direct information because of the sheer number of calls. As you focus closer on specific offices and regions, there are less callers and less of a chance that you'll be quickly dismissed. If the representative on the phone doesn't know, simply call back at a different time or consider sending a letter. The key is to get someone who isn't swamped with work.

Evidence May Cause Them To Contact You

The idea of getting new evidence may seem useless or frustrating, but it can be an attention-grabbing tool. It doesn't matter if you've already been to the hospital for examinations or turned in all of the paperwork you have; if you deliver new evidence, someone has to accept it.

The Health Care section of eBenefits allows you to track when evidence is accepted. If you aren't seeing any notices of evidence acceptance within a month, there's a much bigger problem than backlogs or busy clerks. There's a problem at that VA facility, and complaints are needed to help them--not necessarily to fire the representatives or ruin careers, but to find out the underlying problems and work towards fixing the facility for you, your fellow veterans and the workers.

A lawyer may be necessarily to take things to the next level. If official paperwork isn't being accepted on time, you shouldn't rely on waiting for the right representative to accept your complaints alone. A personal injury attorney can gather your evidence--old and new--into a more organized package of information to take to a higher level of authority.

There are lots of different offices and officials that may not have public-available phone numbers. An attorney has more experience with tracking this contact information down, even if it means taking legal action. Keep things official and civil, and contact an attorney to push your claim or appeal through the VA system. It's to your benefit and the benefit of other veterans using those resources.

Contact a legal office like Dimeo Law Offices to learn more.

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