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COLA Reaches New Peak The Consumer Price Index climbed to 1.4 percent, its highest level in FY 2013. Follow the trends at
www.moaa.org/cola.
Medical Records ‘Samba’
Congress grills DoD and the VA on claims backlog.
In an unusual joint hearing July 10 between the House Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees, senior Pentagon and VA officials pledged their departments soon would be able to transfer military medical records. The records are used to make service and VA disability determinations.
In 2012, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki testified before the same panels that they were working together to create a lifelong electronic medical record for troops and veterans. But earlier this year, DoD announced it was walking away from the vision of a common medical records platform in favor of a separate software management system that would be able to communicate with the VA.
House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.); House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.); and ranking members of the two committees, Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Mike Michaud (D-Maine), decried the lack of leadership on an issue they said is critical to resolving the backlog of nearly 800,000 claims in the VA.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, testified the search was on for an entirely new medical software system to replace the current DoD AHLTA system. He insisted, however, any new system will be able to deliver medical data to the VA seamlessly. He said military medical records and underlying software management systems are separate and distinct issues (i.e., a common DoD/VA platform was not needed, only the capability to transfer medical records data).
Miller asked how many of the software platforms DoD is considering use the VA’s renowned VISTA system, and Kendall acknowledged the three finalists were “VISTA-based solutions.” Kendall also said DoD projected it would be able to transfer integrated medical records data to the VA in 2014, far ahead of the original 2017 deadline.
Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Jessica Wright said DoD and the VA have forged an agreement by which all active duty service medical records are certified complete before being shipped to the VA. Eighty percent of records now shipped from the services are paper-based, but medical data is transferred electronically between the departments every day.
In a Senate hearing in May, a senior VA official testified there were complications certifying the completeness of medical records of mobilized National Guard member records because they remain under state control except during call-ups.
MOAA applauds the leadership of the House Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees for insisting the departments must soon solve this problem, one central to timely and accurate disability and benefits determinations in both DoD and the VA.
A $28,000 Pay Cap?
The military pay raise must be sustained.
Sustaining military pay raises comparable to those of the average American is a fundamental principle of the all-volunteer force, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
However, the administration, in its FY 2014 budget proposal, has proposed capping the currently serving troops’ pay raise for FY 2014 at 1 percent, versus the 1.8-percent raise called for in statute.
In 2003, Congress passed a law tying military pay raises to private-sector pay growth as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index (ECI).
Over the past 12 years, Congress worked hard to fix the 13.5-percent pay gap (and resulting retention problems) caused by repeatedly capping military raises below private-sector pay growth in the 1980s and ’90s.
34 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2013
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