0. National Work Queue (NWQ)
April 2015

1. What is the National Work Queue?
The National Work Queue (NWQ) is a paperless workload management initiative designed to improve VBA’s overall productive capacity and assist with reaching the Secretary’s goals of eliminating the backlog by processing all claims in 125 days with improved accuracy.

2. Why a National Work Queue?

3. What will the NWQ do?
The NWQ will allow us to prioritize and distribute VBA’s entire rating inventory and:
Match work assignments with VBA capacity and resources
Standardize workload management best practices
Increase output by identifying and routing actionable claims to ROs
Identify rework trends to identify training gaps
Significantly reduce rework rate

4. NWQ Timeline Transition Phase NWQ PHASE 1 NWQ PHASE 2
- Currently in process and began with Oldest Claims Initiatives (2 year/1 year)
- Oversight and management of workload re-distribution by the 4 Area Offices with workload management assistance from a Virtual Workload Management Team
NWQ PHASE 1
- October 2015 Kick-off
- 8 RO staggered roll-out
- Automatic routing of rating related end products
- Direct assignment of work from NWQ to RO queues
- Assignment of work from RO queues to RO employees
- Standardized deferral process
NWQ PHASE 2
- 1st Quarter 2016
- Automatic routing of paperless appeals, non-rating end products and work items
- Diagnostic Tool
- Continued analysis of workload complexity

5. Main Features of the NWQ
Daily Assignment of Work
Claims Prioritization at a National Level
Development of Station-by-Station Productive Capacity Model
Robust Deferral Process
Unique Routing Rules

6. Claims Prioritization at a National Level
All rules and filters are dynamic, meaning that adjustments can be made centrally and not depend on software releases and upgrades.

7. Daily Assignment of Work
In Phase 1, the first parameter for the assignment of claims will remain the geographic proximity to the Veteran’s place of residence, as long as that station has the capacity and amount of prioritized work to accommodate. Bottom Line: Our goal is to distribute the work to the RO that can address the Veteran’s claim most quickly.

8. Productive Capacity
The expected level of work that can be assigned/completed based upon the number of employees, their position types, and grade levels.
VA Regional Office

9. Deferral Process
Will leverage technology associated with VBMS to gather more granular reasons and rationale associated with deferred claims
Trend analysis will be conducted by Compensation Service on deferral data in order to drive nationwide consistency through establishment/clarification of policy and procedure

10. Unique Routing
Careful consideration has been given to ensure previously centralized/specialized workload gets routed to the appropriate location (Mustard Gas, Radiation, etc.)

11. Quality Diagnostic Tool
Future Phases
Automated Routing of:
Non-Rating Workload
Appeals Workload
Work Items
Quality Diagnostic Tool
Evaluation of claims complexity and employee skillset for possible future assignment options