WASHINGTON, DC -- Improvements in a wide variety of services to veterans are documented in the Annual Performance Report FY 2000 by theDepartment of Veterans Affairs (VA).
More than 3.8 million patients used VA health care, over 2.6 million veterans and family members received monthly VA disability compensation payments, and nearly 2.4 million graves were maintained at our national cemeteries.
"We set challenging standards for our employees and our programs," Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi said. "Behind each statistic in this report are success stories like the disabled veteran with new job skills acquired in an expanding vocational rehabilitation program, or health care that allows us to treat the suffering of more veterans than the year before."
VA scored gains in indicators like the use of nationally recognized treatment guidelines and decreased waiting times for patients, but the report also documents continuing problems with timely decisions on compensation and pension claims. While benefit processing lagged, the chance of a veteran getting a busy signal when calling a benefits office was down dramatically, and there was an 8.5 percent improvement in the overall length of time it takes VA to handle all types of appeals.
An increasing share of respondents rated the quality of service provided by national cemeteries as "excellent." With the opening of three new national cemeteries and four new state veterans cemeteries, the percent of veterans with one of these cemeteries within a reasonable distance of their homes continued to grow.
The VA Performance Report is submitted to the President and Congress annually under the Government Performance and Results Act. Of 116 performance goals set at the start of the fiscal year, VA met 53 percent of the goals for which it had data. For another 22 percent, performance was equal to or better than that recorded the previous year.
For example, in reducing appeals resolution time, the goal was an average of 670 days. While VA missed that target by 12 days (ending the year with an average of 682), this performance reflects a reduction of 63 days from its FY 1999 performance.
For the development and rating of the most complicated and time-consuming types of compensation and pension claims, VA's average processing time was 173 days. VA cited new legislation and complex regulatory changes in not realizing its target of a 160-day average. The report predicts the situation will worsen this year due to these two factors.
In health care, VA patients indicated a high level of satisfaction with both inpatient and outpatient services and, for the second year in a row, patients' satisfaction with VA outpatient care ranked above outpatient care offered by private-sector hospitals. In addition to treating more patients and increasing the number of facilities providing health care, the cost of care continued to decline.
VA's medical research benefits not only veterans but also the nation as a whole and the international community. Many modern technologies -- including the cardiac pacemaker, the CT scan, magnetic resonance imaging and drug therapy for the mentally ill -- have their roots in VA research.
A copy of the Performance Report is available on VA's Web site at <http://www.va.gov/budget/report/index.htm>
