The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to speed veterans’ benefits claims processing, using automated document analysis and search tools to cut review times.
After Congress passed the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act in 2022 – which expands VA healthcare and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances – VA staff faced an unprecedented documentation burden. The undertaking is detailed in a coming case study from Booz Allen Hamilton.
Each veteran’s electronic claims folder contains an average of roughly 100 documents totaling about 1,300 pages of medical evidence, service history, and correspondence. Veteran service representatives (VSRs) traditionally had to manually search through this information to complete required internal claims documents, according to the case study.
To tackle this problem, the VA teamed up with Booz Allen Hamilton to introduce an AI-enabled intelligent document processing (IDP) pipeline powered by Amazon Textract.
Using optical character recognition and machine learning, the system extracts structured, machine-readable text from veterans’ documents – including from sources like handwritten notes or clinical annotations. It then indexes that information at scale into a searchable repository.
Additionally, the team introduced “Smart Search,” a tool that allows VSRs to filter veterans’ medical evidence by content and jump directly to the exact passages relevant to the task at hand. On average, the tool reduces each claim to just 10 pages of documents, enabling reviewers to find the right evidence roughly 9x faster.
“Smart Search is changing how work actually gets done at VA by moving claims faster without cutting corners or lowering standards for veterans,” Rich Crowe, the president of the civil sector at Booz Allen, said in a statement to MeriTalk.
“Our solutions have succeeded because our team didn’t just bring advanced technology to the table – we used our deep knowledge of the VA’s systems to effectively collaborate with agency partners and deliver results quickly,” Booz Allen wrote in a Jan. 28 blog post.
“Today, the claims-development phase, which historically was the most time-consuming aspect of the VA benefits process, has been accelerated without lowering quality standards,” the company added. “VSRs report that the tools make them both faster and more accurate, and veterans are rapidly receiving life-changing benefits.”
Booz Allen noted that these solutions give the VA “a massive data repository on which it can train AI models.” This data can be used to drive decision support or triage missing documentation earlier in the intake process, helping the VA to improve its processes.
Notably, in November, the VA announced that it reduced its claims backlog by more than 57% since the start of the second Trump administration. In fiscal year 2025, the VA processed an all-time high of 3,001,734 disability compensation and pension claims.
“Our record claims processing productivity is proof these efforts are working,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in November. “Veterans deserve fast and accurate claims decisions, and we look forward to continuing to deliver amazing results to those who have worn the uniform.”