 Hi, everyone. I'm DAB National Service Director Jim Marslack. Thanks for joining us today. Normally during this time of year, we'll be gathered at our National Convention and hosting a number of guests to talk with DAB members about what's going on at the VA. While our convention was canceled this year due to the ongoing pandemic, we do not want you to miss out on these important conversations. So as part of DAB and the Auxiliary Virtual Salute, today we are joined by Cheryl Mason, Chairman of the Board of Veterans Appeals. Chairman Mason was appointed to serve as the Chairman of the Board of Veterans Appeals and conferred on him by the United States Senate on November 8, 2017. And her role as Chairman, she leads a team of approximately 1,200 personnel, including veteran law judges, attorneys, and operations and administrative professionals to meet the Board's mission of conducting hearings and deciding appeals for veterans and their families. Chairman Mason, I just want to say thank you for being part of our first virtual salute. Great. Thank you for having me. So we'll jump right in. Veterans and survivors are filing claims and appeals. We've all had to make adjustments in order to continue serving veterans. Can you tell us how this pandemic has affected operations at the Board of Veterans Appeals? Absolutely, Jim. Thanks again. So the board, like the rest of the VA, has remained open throughout the pandemic and operating. We have learned to pivot. Luckily for the board, we already had a history of being able to be agile and flexible, and this touched us a little bit and we came out very, very strong. So we were already 50% telework when the pandemic hit. So approximately 50% of my staff were either remote or full telework. And so within two weeks, we were able to move 49% of the remaining portion of our staff to telework. And so on or about April 1st, the board was at 99% telework to continue our mission of serving veterans. And the remaining 1% were on weather safety leave, and we worked with them to try to transition them to other rooms that are short period of time. And then, you know, we had some people who when we opened phase one, that group was back. So the biggest impact to our operations was the hearing. The board's mission, as you know, is to hold hearing and issue decisions. And you can't issue a decision if you haven't held a hearing if the veteran has requested a hearing. And because of the pandemic, we had to shut down our in-person hearings, which means we had to shut down travel boards. We had to shut down videos because the regional offices were not open to the public. And we had to shut down our central office hearings here on site at the board. However, the board had already positioned to start testing virtual telehearing. And we had started that last July, and some organizations like DAV had participated with that testing. And so we were able to move into full virtual telehearing mode. I have 102 judges who can all hold hearings, and they can do so from their home. We have the capacity and the technology to do so. The hearing team can fully support them. And so our biggest challenge was getting the word out to our veteran service organizations, our advocates, and our veterans that this was a possibility. And so that was our biggest challenge. And we have, with your help and with your partnership and many others in that arena, we have started to see an uptick in our virtual telehearing. So we're very excited because we think like telehealth like VHA is doing with telehealth. This is going to be the wave of the future for how we operate. I think the hearings, you know, it's such a great opportunity for one veterans want to be able to tell their stories on the record, why they believe they're entitled to the benefit. And, you know, there's an overwhelming number of requests that are pending right now. What's that number? In Legacy, as you know, we have two different areas. We have about 65,000 hearings pending in Legacy. We had worked that down to about 55,000 when we saw it grow in COVID due to, you know, because we lose about 12,000 hearings in three to four months' time scheduled. So it's 65,000 pending in Legacy. And we've got about 22,000 pending in A&A. And so, you know, that's significant because we can't get to those decisions unless we hold the hearing. And I'll tell you that, you know, we're kind of like the Dr. Seuss green eggs and ham. I can have it here. I can have it there. We can hold hearings everywhere. We've held hearings with veterans in a truck on their lunch break, alongside of a road. You know, with their sitting with their VSO in their home or connecting to their VSO, family and caregivers can help with that. You know, we've made adjustments so veterans can hold here. You know, we've had a couple with veterans in hospitals or nursing homes. But we can do that with this technology. It really opens up a whole different world for what we can offer our veterans to make it easier for them because that's what we're about. Access to get their story told to get there. And that's what we're doing. I think that's excellent. With technology today, doing a virtual hearing, like you said, from your cell phone, whether you're on your lunch break or you take a break at work, and your VSO can be connected to that same hearing as well, which is, again, another excellent opportunity. And we spoke earlier today about the board creating the ability now to where you're going to actually notify everybody that's got a pending hearing that, hey, you can have a virtual hearing if you like, or you can wait if you still want to wait, but it is going to be some time. As we know, the majority of the VA regional offices are still closed. We have no idea when they are going to open. So taking advantage of a virtual hearing, again, you get to see the judge on the screen. Your VSO can be on there with you. You can pre-conference with your VSO to have any discussions prior to the hearing. Again, it's just another excellent opportunity to be able to get that done in a much quicker fashion. So I commend you and your staff for making that happen, especially doing everything that's going on. Like you said, the board was at 50% telework. Now you're at 99%. So there was a lot of moving parts there. So to get that operational is significant. And we thank you. I know our veterans are grateful that they have this other opportunity now. So thank you very much for that. Sure. Yeah. We are sending out letters to veterans telling them of this opportunity and encouraging them to communicate to their VSOs and advocates that they would like to move to the virtual technology. And like I said, family members and caregivers can, and VSOs can assist with that if the veteran needs help with the technology. Much like we've done in our hearings in the past where we've had a witness support the veteran, that can continue in the video world. We know many of our veterans are challenged with technology or might need some assistance. And we're very open to that. We can make it work. And it's just not video as well. Let's say they don't have the video capability. They can still do the hearing over the telephone with the judge. Is that correct? We can't do telephone because we don't have recording capability. That's something we are trying to explore. The video, we don't record the video piece. We record the audio piece, but it's a digital so it's connected. So if they don't have that capability for, for virtual telehearing, they can just, you know, they can send us their story and writing and we, you know, we at the board consider all the evidence. We look at all the written evidence, lay statements from the veteran and their personal statements can be just important, you know, if they can just write out what they want to tell us. We will take that and they don't have to wait for our hearing. That is an option in this situation because like we said, most of the VDA regional offices are not open to the public, even though they're working on things. And so we can't, we, we depend on them for both travel board and video. I can't send my judges out on travel board right now. It's not safe and it's not safe for the veterans to come to the videos or for you all to come to the videos. So, you know, having this capability is, is really amazing. And we continue that the president signed the VDA virtual hearing modernization act in April. And so virtual telegarrings are now one of the options permanently veterans can choose. And we encourage them to do that because it gives us so much versatility. It doesn't, you know, one of the challenges the board has often had is the like test hearing because of the time change. Well, we can, we can adjust for that because, you know, judges are working from home. We can make that work. You know, and so we've been able to hold California and Oregon, I think are one of our top two areas I believe right now for virtual telegaring for that reason. And so, you know, but there is an option if, if the veteran doesn't want to leave for a hearing or it doesn't have a virtual capability, we encourage them to write down their story and send it in because that is, that is pertinent information that we need that will help us make that decision. That's great. I mean, again, you know, a lot of people just want to be able to, to get on the record and explain why they feel they're entitled to the benefit, which again, we support them in that, in that regard. Hearings are just such a, a massive amount of work for you. And so being able to do it virtually can't speed up the process. That's one thing I want veterans to take away from this, this conference is that, you know, you have the ability to speed that up if you want, right? And you could talk to your local BSO in order to get that sped up for you for them to request a virtual hearing. Switching gears just a little bit. I want to talk about the different types of appeals at the board. We have AMA and legacy and AMA, which stands for Appeals Modernization Act. That took effect in February of 2019. And then we have the legacy appeals and those were any appeal pending prior to that. I know the board has a lofty goal to resolve all legacy appeals. So I wanted you to talk a little bit about that and where we are number wise with legacy in AMA. Yeah, sure. Absolutely happy to talk about it. So with the legacy appeals, as you know, when I took office in November, December 17, the department had almost 500,000 legacy appeals. And those appeals sat in the VBA lane, because there was kind of a complaint there with the Veterans Benefits Administration. There were some Veterans Health Administration and there were some of the board. So we have really kicked it in and really focused on everything we can do to get those legacies decided because that is part of our priority promise we made. When we all got together in March of 2016 and created what would eventually become the Appeals Modernization Act, the department made a commitment and we have honored and continued to make that commitment that we will prioritize. And we're continuing to do that. So what you have seen this year is you have seen VBA really and VHA make very strong efforts to really work down their pieces of the appeals that they still own and move those to the board. And so right now at the Board of Veterans Appeals, there's approximately 113,000 legacy appeals. That sounds like a big number. It really isn't because there's only about 61,000 left at VBA. VHA has less than 2,000. So in the whole department right now, as I talked to you, there is approximately about 185,000 in legacy. That's huge in three years to have worked down over almost 300,000 appeals to get to this point. And so the board is very focused on those legacy appeals. Again, that's why the hearings are important because that's our biggest chunk of our hearings is those legacy appeals. And so we work cases very quickly. I will give you some numbers and tell you where we are right now as of today when we sit here. The board is at 87,740 board decisions out the door for FY20. The board's goal for FY20 is 91,000. We're going to hit that in what time it should be. About 71,000 of those 87,000 appeals are legacy. Working as the cases, as the legacy cases, as we get more from VBA as they're concluding their work and completing their remand work, you'll see the number of legacies we're deciding increase for a period of time while we're prioritizing that work. The board right now, as you know, has hit records the last two years in deciding appeals. We expect to be pretty close to 100,000. And so that's really amazing. Part of that really is because we lost some of the hearing capacity and so we just have more time to sign. And so we're seeing that convert in the decision, which is great because those veterans who either already had hearings or having hearings or didn't want hearings, so that's what's going on in the legacy for appeals, for the AMA cases, the appeals modernization cases. We have about 48,500 sitting at the board right now. The remainder are with VBA and they have, you know, with the different lanes in the AMA, they have the higher-level, the sub-level same lanes, and I know that their numbers are putting their report on that. So of our AMA cases, as you know, we have the three direct, we have the three direct hearing lanes. Our biggest case load is the hearing lane in the AMA because 50% of our veterans are using the hearing lane. And unfortunately, there's going to be a delay there because I have to prioritize the hearings, the legacy, and the legacy hearings, and the direct review lane is 365 days. So we want to get that information out to veterans so that they know that. We're working to get timelines set on all lanes. I can tell you that right now, our average days pending is we sit about 200 days in the direct lane. So if the veteran comes to the board in the direct lane, which has no hearing, no evidence, it's a straight review, we're doing those appeals in about 200 days. And the additional evidence lane where you can submit additional evidence up to 90 days after you file your 10182 with the board, we're doing those in an average of 219 days. And even in our AMA cases, which is our biggest area, we're doing those appeals in about 200. That's where we were as, again, it's the legacy cases, more cases come in, we have to expect to see these lanes, the numbers go up a little bit in the number of days. But like I said, we have over 100 judges in 850, 20s, and we are committed to deciding these veterans because we know the impact it has on the veterans lives. And that they're waiting for these. So we're doing our best to meet the priority of the legacy and get those students out for veterans who have been waiting way too long. But at the same time, we're trying to get those AMA cases for the veterans. Don't get into the situation where they have to wait long again, because that's why we've created AMA. Well, I'll tell you, I think it's significant you're going to exceed the goal for the second year in a row here and getting cases completed. I think that's three years. That's awesome. That's awesome. It really is. I mean, you know, that's a better one. They want to be able to get their decisions timely and then have some options as a result of that change from here. So I think that's great. One of the most common questions we get is what is the status of my appeal? And I know you guys have worked very, very hard on providing an opportunity for veterans to be able to find their own status. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so thank you for that question. So we know veterans want to know where's my appeal? What's happening with my appeal? Do you know I'm out here waiting? And so in March of 18. We worked very closely with Digital Service who has been working with us to create the Claims and Appeals tracker. So a veteran can log on to VA.gov just like they would log on to eBenefits and to check something in eBenefits. They can use that same log on to go into the Claims, the VA.gov status tracker. And it's under Claims and Disability Well, it's called the Claims and Appeals Status Tracker. And you can log into there and find out the status of your appeal. And it will tell you what it is. Usually right now it's about on a week. We update. We update every week. That's an OIT function. So we're updating it every week. You can also call the VA status line and, you know, they can tell you where your case is as well. And so we do work on that. If veterans have had a change of circumstances because of health reasons or financial reasons or natural disasters, they can actually advance on the docket request and they can file those directly with the board and we move those cases to the front of the line. As you know, the word works cases in docket order and to the law. So we have to work on these cases first. And, you know, we're doing that. So, but we want veterans to be able to communicate and find out what the status of their cases so they know that we're working with. Because that's always a concern. And, you know, Jim that we work with you guys very closely on how we move the cases through here at the board and how we monitor and track that. Thank you. We're just about out of time. I want to make a couple points for the folks at home that you know, if you go and look at your status and you have a hearing pending or know you have a hearing pending and if you want to change that to a virtual hearing, contact us we'll be more than happy to help you get that coordinated and scheduled for you. But we really want to thank you for joining us today chairman and thanks to everyone tuning in at home. You can catch more conversations like this and all of our DAV in auxiliary virtual salute content at DAV.org forward slash virtual salute. So thank you again. Thank you.