Improving Performance in the Integrated Disability Evaluation System
Abstract
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have instituted a jointly managed disability evaluation process. This process began as the Disability Evaluation System Pilot (DES-P), which was initiated in the National Capitol Region (NCR), and it eventually expanded to 27 sites. The pilot was declared a success and is now being rolled out world-wide as the Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES). In the departments' joint report to Congress dated August 31, 2010, the data in the report illustrate that processing time has increased consistently since February 2010. Further, while 10,698 Army Soldiers had entered the process by January 2011, only 26% managed to complete the process, and the Army's case processing time for a Soldier in IDES grew from 294 days in October 2010 to 302 days by January 2011. In concert with this growth in processing time, the IDES is planned to increase in size by roughly double during fiscal year 2011. Failure to address the IDES program's declining performance impacts the Army's population of medically nondeployable Soldiers and, as a consequence, it impacts medical readiness and Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN). This paper proposes a more comprehensive, data-driven performance management system for the execution of the IDES program. The paper also presents metrics to monitor work in process as well as completed work, and proposes automation system changes to better monitor performance and respond to surges for both the VA and DoD partners.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA565079
Entities
People
- John E. Kent
Organizations
- United States Department of Veterans Affairs