An executive order signed this week directs the VA to speed up disability claims for service members who are just leaving the military, with officials projecting the change could cut processing times by up to 30 days for that group. The order builds on the existing pre-discharge program, pushing the department toward more automation, earlier exam scheduling, and tighter coordination so that separating troops' medical records reach the VA before out-processing wraps.
If you're separating in the next year, that's good news worth using. If you left service in 2011, read the second half of this post.
What the order goes after
The pre-discharge program has existed for years: file your claim in the window before you separate, get your exams while you're still in uniform, and have a decision land at or near your separation date. We've written about
why filing before you take off the uniform is the single best timing play available, and this order aims at the friction inside that program: exams scheduled late, records moving slowly between departments, decisions stalling in the first months after discharge.
The tools named are automation and coordination. Automated decision support already piloted in parts of the claims system would be expanded, and the departments would be required to coordinate records transfers before a separating member's final out-processing date.
Three caveats
This helps one population. Veterans service organizations welcomed the move while pointing out the obvious: the broader backlog, the one affecting veterans discharged years or decades ago, is a larger and harder problem this order doesn't address. If your claim has been pending since last year, nothing here is aimed at you.
Faster isn't the same as better. We've
covered the reporting showing denial rates climbing as the VA pushed throughput, and a court system finding errors in the overwhelming majority of decisions that reach it. Speed pressure and accuracy pressure pull against each other, and an order that emphasizes automation for a population filing its very first claims deserves a careful eye rather than applause.
Automation makes your file the whole ballgame. A human adjudicator might notice what your file implies. Automated decision support processes what your file contains. If anything in that shift reaches your claim, the veterans who submit complete, organized, well-evidenced files will do fine, and the veterans who file thin will get fast decisions that are fast and wrong.
What separating members should do with this
Use the window, don't just benefit from it. Everything we've written about first claims applies, with the timing advantage on top: get every condition documented at your separation physical, claim everything you can support rather than just the worst thing, and walk into your exams understanding
what's being scored.
And read the decision when it arrives, on the
five checks
rather than just the percentage. A decision that arrives 30 days sooner is 30 days sooner to appeal if it's wrong.
Where we come in
We're a veteran-led firm, and through
Valor First Claim we represent transitioning service members and new veterans on initial claims at no charge, which means the speed this order promises gets paired with a file built to survive whatever is reading it. If your separation date is on the calendar,
reach out before the paperwork starts moving without you.
