For the past year, the Department of Veterans Affairs has been working on reducing its disability claims backlog, which currently has thousands of veterans across the country waiting longer than the standard 125 days for a response. The Washington Post reported that the waiting period varies drastically from city to city, with nine VA offices making veterans wait more than one year.
Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Reno, Nev., St. Louis and Winston-Salem, N.C., are the cities with the longest waits for disability claims. Reno is the worst offender, with an average wait of 433.9 days, according to data from the VA. Baltimore has the second-longest wait at 395.7 days, while Winston-Salem, Los Angeles and Cleveland round out the top five.
Although Reno has slowest rate of processing disability claims, it also a relatively low number of claims, according to the news source. About 6,600 Reno veterans have claims pending, while the Winston-Salem office has nearly 37,000 veterans waiting for a response.
After President Barack Obama prioritized reducing the disability claims backlog earlier this year, the VA has made considerable improvement in cutting down the wait time. The federal agency announced last November that the backlog dropped by 34 percent since March.