An internal audit in February of Deschutes County Veterans’ Services Department found new clients waiting up to three months for an initial appointment, sometimes causing a delay in receipt of their benefits.

Veterans’ Services is the local liaison between the federal government’s Veterans Affairs Department and the vets who need services, said county department Director Keith MacNamara.

“We’re here to be their advocates,” he said. “We advocate for them for disability, pension, medical or family benefits because the application process can be lengthy and very intimidating.”

MacNamara requested the county audit his department so he and his staff could learn where they could improve services to their clients.

“It was kind of self-imposed because I wanted to find out if there was a better way to do things,” he said. “The more clients we can see and the better services we can provide, the more money comes into Deschutes County and is spent here.”

MacNamara said by adopting some of the audit recommendations, he and his staff have streamlined their services and gotten more money to more clients. About 16,000 veterans live in Deschutes County alone, and the department employs a staff of just three.

“We have 4,300 clients we are actively working with, so the case load is tremendous,” MacNamara said. “Because the county was supportive with our budget this year, we were able to bring our assistant service officer up to full time and have reduced first-time-visit waits to between 30 and 40 days.”

First notice

By sending an informal claim to the state Veterans’ Affairs office on the day new clients indicate they’d like to make a claim, MacNamara is able to prevent the wait time from reducing the amount of benefits due to a veteran.

“The day the VA gets the claim is the date from which they’ll begin to receive benefits when their claim is approved,” MacNamara said. “We reserve their date by submitting a formal claim, which only takes five to 10 minutes to fill out.”

Once the informal claim is made, the client has to prove they’re eligible for benefits by providing the VA with evidence, such as a diagnosis of disability, dates of service or any other evidence the VA requests. The process can be lengthy and tedious, especially for veterans who served years or decades ago.

“Gathering the evidence can be very time consuming,” MacNamara said. “The problem isn’t the time it takes to see the client, it’s the hours of work that goes into verifying their claim.”

The audit, conducted by county auditor David Givans, determined a high number of out-of-county veterans requesting services from the Deschutes County office — about 11 percent of total clientele — was another reason local veterans were experiencing long wait times for appointments.

“Providing services to non-Deschutes veterans is a likely contributor to longer wait times for getting an appointment,” Givans wrote in the audit. “Deschutes County Veterans’ Services Office is only supposed to deal with Deschutes County veterans.”

MacNamara said he’s been working closely with the Veterans’ Services offices in surrounding counties to encourage clients to visit the departments in their county of residence.

“Some of the people who were coming to us travel often to Bend, so it was more convenient to come to our office,” he said. “I don’t care what side of the road they live on, we don’t want to refuse services to anyone, but we have reduced the number of non-Deschutes County veterans we’re seeing by working with the other offices.”

‘Boots on the ground’

MacNamara said despite the heavy case load and the complexity of researching evidence to get services to veterans in need, he loves the work he does. “When people start receiving benefits, it changes their lives,” he said. “Their quality of life can go up so much, especially if the person is elderly, or on a fixed income.”

Bend resident Edward “Willie” Williamson is one of the people who MacNamara and his staff helped guide through the maze of filing a disability claim with the VA. Williamson graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1970 and served two tours in Vietnam between 1971 and 1973. He left the Navy in 1976.

Williamson was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1975. Later in life he developed heart disease and Crohn’s disease.

“About three years ago, while I was still covered by private health insurance, I began getting worried about what I was going to do when I lost it,” Williamson said. “I wanted to get in with the VA before that happened.”

Williamson met with MacNamara, and they began the lengthy process of proving to the federal government that Williamson served when and where he said he did.

MacNamara asked Williamson if he’d ever been “boots on the ground” — on land in Vietnam — or had he always been on a Navy ship. The VA’s “boots on the ground” policy states that any combat veteran who touched Vietnam soil was exposed to dangerous herbicides, such as Agent Orange, which were widely used in the war.

Williamson recounted a time when he and another officer had been flown by helicopter to the base in Da Nang. By being “boots on the ground” at that time, Williamson is presumed by the VA to qualify for disability benefits.

“The difficult part is that the burden of proof is on you,” he said. “They wanted me to remember, down to within a 30-day window, when I went. I can’t even remember what happened last week, let alone 40 years ago.”

Williamson at first couldn’t remember if the trip to Da Nang happened in 1971 or 1972. Once he determined the year, he thought the trip was somewhere between November and April, but didn’t think he’d be able to remember more specifics.

“They served as my coach and knew what questions to ask to jog my memory,” he said. “If it wouldn’t have been for them, I definitely would have gotten frustrated and given up.”

Once Williamson was able to determine the trip happened either in November or December, the staff at Veterans’ Services went so far as to request the ship logs from the Navy, poring over them day-by-day to find any record of a helicopter taking off from the ship.

“They called me in April of this year and said they’d found it,” Williamson said. “After that, things started moving really rapidly with the VA.”

After nearly two years of researching the case and presenting evidence, Williamson was awarded 70 percent disability. He said the money he receives has made a huge difference in his life. He suffered from severe medical issues a few years ago, wiping out most of his savings and retirement to pay for treatment.

“It’s everything,” he said. “When the disability checks started to arrive, it lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I can pay my bills now.”