How Automation Helps Veterans

Tyler Podcast Episode 17, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and content marketing director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

Veterans have been impacted by the pandemic but automation and technology are helping them access the benefits they deserve. Find out how the Kansas Commission on Veterans Affairs leverages automation to take care of Veterans in need. Especially those who cannot access services and benefits on their own. Semper Gumby!

Transcript

Jeremy Miller: A Marine term and often used in the Navy is Semper Gumby, always flexible. And if you say that to people, they're going to automatically... Well, of course, absolutely. That's what we do to get the job done. And so no matter where they are on the spectrum, they're still veterans at their core and they go back to a lot of it. They go back to their basic training of what they had to do just to get the job done, and they're willing to do it.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies. It's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places and technology making a difference. I'm your host, Jeff Harrell, Director of Content Marketing for Tyler Technologies, and I'm so glad that you've joined us. The pandemic has impacted so many people. And today we look at how it has impacted our veterans. We talk to Eric Rohleder, who is the Deputy Director for Veteran Services and Jeremy Miller, who is a Mobile Veteran Services representative of the Kansas Commission on Veterans Affairs. States' Veterans Affairs offices are responsible for providing free assistance to veterans and their dependents and survivors. Things like compensation and pension, home loans, housing, healthcare, medical records, military records, education training, employment, burial, and survival claims assistance, disability benefits, and rights. You name it, and the Veterans Affairs offices help veterans handle it. As you can imagine, many veterans fall into the high risk category and they're used to walking into their Veterans Affairs offices. So what happens when a pandemic hits and that's no longer an option? Well, technology and automation can become a game changer. In this interview. You'll hear Eric and Jeremy mention ETK, which is Tyler's Entellitrak based case management solution. Well, without further ado, here is my conversation with Eric Rohleder and Jeremy Miller. Well, Eric and Jeremy, so grateful for what you guys both do for our veterans and Jeremy, I'd love to start with you. What problem are you guys solving for our veterans?

Jeremy Miller: We assist veterans in navigating the claims process and really our first duty to the veteran is to just find out what it is that they want to file for. Sometimes that takes some coaxing. Veterans often come in not knowing what the benefits are or having misconceptions about how to get those benefits, and what they might qualify for, and what they might not qualify for. We just help them navigate that process, make sure we're following the VA rules and get them the right forms, make sure that they're aware of everything that's going on, and then we submit the claims on their behalf directly to the VA. And so that's kind of what our role is. And we just fill a gap that is necessary for them to get through this process, because it is a challenging process. If you try to do it on your own.

Veteran Benefits

Jeff Harrell: And Jeremy, what are some examples of benefits that veterans may not be aware of?

Jeremy Miller: Well recently in fact, January 1st, 2020, the Blue Water Navy Act came into our office. Basically, what that means is that veterans that served within 12 nautical miles of Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict, Vietnam War, they're now eligible for presumptive illnesses that normally were only authorized for veterans that were boots on ground in Vietnam. And so we can go back and look at the ships logs, we can determine that their ship was or was not in coastal waters at that time and help them get the benefits if they have a presumptive illness that's associated with Agent Orange exposure. Another benefit that a lot of people don't know about is if a veteran passes away from a service connected disability, their spouse may be eligible for what's called dependency indemnity compensation, or even a survivor's pension. A lot of people don't realize that. We have other benefits for the children of veterans that are a hundred percent service connected for school. If they're still in school or college aged students, then we can help them with benefits that go along with that. And then of course there's the GI bill, the home loan programs, nursing homes, we can help them navigate with that. And we don't want to leave out our cemeteries. State cemeteries and national cemeteries that they're eligible for as long as they have an honorable discharge, we can help them look into that.

Jeff Harrell: Jeremy, I love how you said that you fill in the gaps for our veterans. And I can imagine some of these processes can be a fairly lengthy process. Talk to me a little bit about how automation has helped you navigate these waters.

Jeremy Miller: Well, as I said, we want to try to get the big picture for the veteran and find out what it is that they actually need. And sometimes that takes a little bit of digging. One of the things that automation does for us is it fills in the forms that we need to do. Everybody knows the standard 526EZ the 1010EZ. Well, what happens with ETK is, once we enter the data into the database and we go to the form itself, depending on the form, it could be between 30 and 80% of the form is prefilled, prepopulated with their name, address, phone number, social security number, VA claim number, service number, all that stuff is on nearly every form that the VA has. And with automation, if that's already filled up for you can get to, okay, what do you want to claim? And how are we going to get you the benefit from the claim that you want to turn in and using that system, it also cuts down on things like errors that might take place as well.

Jeff Harrell: And Jeremy, what are some of the costs by not having automation help you through this process?

Jeremy Miller: Our system that we had prior to what Tyler offers with ETK, we didn't have automation. There was very little of the stuff that was taken care of like that. You can have mistakes, even copying a service number incorrectly or missing a blank. That is, it's a standard blank that's always going to be filled out the same way every time. And the automation helps us to not miss a blank through there, and just certainly have accuracy in the process.

Benefits of Automation During a Pandemic

Jeff Harrell: Well, that's great. And I imagine that COVID's also given you even more challenges than maybe you anticipated and how has automation helped with the recent pandemic?

Jeremy Miller: Well, I think COVID certainly has changed the way we do everything in the whole country. Certainly we were affected as well. We had to go from working in an office where we could see people and switch to working in an office at our home. And again, the first thing that we do whenever we meet with a vet, whether it's the first time or whether we've met with them multiple times is, we update the database. We make sure their address, phone number, et cetera, is not changed. If they've gotten married, if they've had kids, if they've gotten divorced, whatever, we make sure that's all ready to go. And then once the database is ready, then we can go into the claims process. And it certainly, when you're talking on the phone, it's difficult enough already to have the time that you need to really get into what your veteran is looking for. The automation just frees up a lot of that time. It just makes it easier for the vet. I think we're going to also talk about electronic signatures and that has been just tremendous to be able to not have to send the claims forms back and forth in the mail several times to get signatures, and then if mistakes are made, you have to send them again and then get signatures. That would've been an absolute nightmare without being able to have electronic signatures available to be able to apply to those forms.

Jeff Harrell: So the electronic form submission has really helped automate and speed up the process, it sounds like.

Jeremy Miller: The electronics forms make it much easier as far as automation goes to, if you make a mistake on a form, you go back into the digital copy, you fix the digital copy while not having to print and reprint and everything else to get the signature +on the actual hard copy that's going to go to the VA. So the direct upload actually takes place at our quality assurance team, but certainly that has a tremendous ability to speed up the claims process as well, we can look at that as a separate component.

Jeff Harrell: Going to switch to you, Eric. I can't imagine as a leader, the kinds of challenges that you were faced with during this pandemic.

Eric Rohleder: If I remember correctly, in January was the big Seattle blow up already and we took a look at our leadership team said, "Hey, let's back up and say, not that this is anywhere near us right now, but what will we have to do if this ever comes to the middle of the United States?" And of course it didn't take very long at all. And in March, we were kind of already poised to transition to the automated system. We were able to come up with an operations planner, our continuity operations say, if this does happen to us and we are not able to work from our offices, or work at the cemeteries, or work at the homes, how are we going to do this? Well, obviously you have to shut their home down if you're not able to work there. And cemeteries, people will always need to be interred. So that kind of fell on our central office and we have a very small overhead central office in veteran services. So those both kind fall under me. And we come up with a plan and that plan was, look, we do it every month because we actually have 14 field offices that cover all 105 counties in the entire state. So we have field offices that pick up their bag with their computer, with their internet, with everything, go to a county clerk's office or a library in one of maybe 17 counties that they cover and they set up shop there. So that's part of how we were able to so easily transition and out there right now, we would not have been able to do it without Tyler and really the ETK, we say, will it be able to handle it? Will it be able to...

Eric Rohleder: Most of the issues we were at individual's homes when they worked from home, obviously we had quite the wide array of everything from not quite dial up to gig service at some of the homes. So, that was everything we really had to do. We had no worries about, or no concerns on the claims management system portion of it. So yeah, once we transitioned, actually the governor March timeframe, call it a stand out. That's when everybody kind of developed their plans for remote working. And if that was a possibility, encouraged that if you can work remotely, then you should do that. And we did, it's in our field offices. So all the veteran service representatives were able to work from home. A month and a half later, two months later, we transitioned, ramped back up in our field offices again, and there again, I mean, it's as simple as plug in the system and go. So we never really saw any loss of service. As a matter of fact, some offices actually assisted more veterans in those months that they worked from home. So I remember, and it's not that long ago, it's actually only 10 years ago where we actually got in the field ops in Hayes, I got hard copy stacks of claim files back then it was a 526, not the EZ, the 1010s, like Jeremy said, and we filled them out with pen and we mailed them down to the retail office, to our quality assurance office. Obviously we were way behind the game then. And the technology and the automation that we asked for at the time wasn't quite to where we needed it. And then the predecessor of ETK, like Jeremy said, we asked for Cloud based and we got it, and we asked for direct upload to the VA and we got it.

Eric Rohleder: And every one of those cuts so much time off of that claim for the veteran and the family member, and that's exactly... One of our goals was to reduce that. At the time, back 10 years ago, the VA had a huge backlog, million claims backlog almost and that was reduced to almost nothing. And then, we said, "Whoa, they're doing their part. Let's do our part." So when we signed up for this, it's good. It's a great deal that the automation, it was in place for COVID and again, seamless transition, really. And if we did have a little hiccup, we were able to pick up a phone and email and it was fixed immediately.

Jeff Harrell: I'm curious to know how COVID has impacted the veteran community. I imagine with underlying conditions and more advanced age, it might have hit them a little differently than some other areas.

Eric Rohleder: The veteran population, a lot of them are high risk. We've got, like I said before, 195,000-ish veterans in the state of Kansas and the majority of them are over 55. So, how do we safely still advocate for the veteran? And I think the answer was, at the time, do it remote. Now we have them coming into our offices. I know that there's going to be a press conference actually this week to see what's going to happen next. But, if we have to transition back to remote, that will not be a problem for us. We just need to continue to... You can do a lot with a telephone and email and secure email. We do have a central fax repository that we're able to have everybody, a lot of the elder veterans that really rely on fax machines that don't necessarily have technology upgrades or updated yet. And that all goes into our central office. Our central office personnel are able to load it right into ETK, the veteran service representative then goes into the claim file and there it is. There's all the documents that they need. So again, just part of that automation that we were able to cut time off the claim and really assist these veterans. A lot of them are still, and I don't blame them, I'm one of those that, if we don't have to get out, let's not get out. Let's do what we can remote. So absolutely it has affected our veterans again, in the real higher risk population.

Jeff Harrell: How are you guys able to communicate with veterans when they couldn't come into the office to find out information? How did you get the word out during this time?

Eric Rohleder: Yeah, so we've developed over the years, some really good partnerships with a lot of the local media, a lot of the state media, public radio, public TV. We are, like I said, a small agency with a small state budget. So we don't really have that built into our budget for marketing and brand awareness. We were able to print media, get that out, voice media, the radio, TV, as much as we could. And it took a while, but we were able to start seeing more and more people call our numbers instead of having to go down and see that sign on the door and say, "Oh man, I made this trip for nothing." So like I said, one of our representatives service 17 counties, which is a good little drive for a lot of veteran. And we reached out to our posts at the other counties and those that travel, the itinerant travel to those counties now has been curtailed due to COVID temporarily. And then we reached out to them, to the hosts, whether it's the library or the city building, county building. And we let them know. Say, "Look, if you have any veterans, anybody needing assistance, any family members, any public that wants to be educated, please contact the servicing field office or our central office." We've do have a toll free number there and some highly proficient people in our central office, Vicky and Tammy, that will get them to where they need to go. Absolutely.

Checking In with Veterans

Jeff Harrell: Well, I'll be back with my conversation with Eric and Jeremy in just a moment. Do you want the latest in public sector insight straight into your inbox? Did you know you can sign up for our monthly email at our resource center? Just go to tylertech.com and click on resources at the top of the page. You can sign up for our monthly recap from any of the content pieces you'll find there. I think you'll find a monthly recap very helpful. Now, back to my conversation with Eric and Jeremy. Well, I know there's been spikes in COVID. I just would love to know from you guys, how are veterans doing these days? How are they holding up?

Jeremy Miller: Now in Western Kansas, we have all varieties of what you think about COVID or what you don't think about COVID. But one of the things that I see about the veterans all across the board that I work with is, if they were a veteran for say two or three or four or 20 years, they go back to their core training of, you flex and you do what you need to do to keep going. You don't stop the tracks. You don't jump the tracks. You just keep on going and maybe you have to take a different route. Maybe you have to wear a mask here and you just keep on striving. You keep on hitting that nail on the head until you get the job done. And that's kind of what the idea is out here. Yes, we absolutely have some of our veterans that don't want to leave their house. I have a gentleman that he kind of calls me on a weekly basis, because I'm working on some claims for him that he just kind of wants to chat and visit sometimes in a lot of ways because he's lonely. He hasn't left his house in a number of months except to get gas and get some groceries here and there. He is fearful because he's in one of those high risk categories, but he very much appreciates that we are willing to shift and do whatever we need to to make sure that his claim still goes through, that we're still taking care of him. Whether that be at my house or whether that be in the office. He's very grateful during this time that we can do all our business over the phone without having to come in.

Jeremy Miller: And then of course there are also veterans that they want to do everything face to face and that's okay. We can accommodate that as well. The ones that are the most difficult to try to help, and it doesn't mean that we can't help them, but certainly technology has allowed this, is the ones that are actually in the nursing home. Those are always difficult to do outreach with and to try to accommodate simply because of the setting that they're in. With the travel restrictions, one of the things that we've been doing, at least I've been doing, is working with the staff at the nursing home. The residents of a nursing home may or may not have a smartphone, but somebody that works at that nursing home certainly does, or they have an iPad that's available or something where they can still see forms. They can still sign the iPad and send it to me electronically. They can do all the stuff we need to do. Primarily because of the crisis, we've been forced into a new way of doing business. And in some ways it's incredibly beneficial. So the veterans take the COVID crisis in stride. A Marine term, and often used in the Navy also as Semper Gumby, always flexible. And if you say that to people, they're going to automatically, Well, of course. Absolutely. That's what we do to get the job done." And so no matter where they are on the spectrum, they're still veterans at their core and a lot of it, they go back to their basic training of what they had to do just to get the job done and they're willing to do it. So that's a good thing. Yeah, Semper Gumby is always flexible. It's a term used by Marines and Navy and Army, just depending on what situation is, you take whatever road is going to get you to the end goal. And sometimes it's not the easiest road, but you still have to go through that path to get there. And that's what we're trained from day one of bootcamp.

Jeff Harrell: Semper Gumby. I love that, and what a perfect saying for, and really attitude for what we're going through right now. Jeremy, you were telling me about just the impact that the direct upload has had. Could you say a little bit more about that and what the benefits have been for veterans?

Jeremy Miller: Here's the difference that it makes, I recently did what's called a dependency indemnity compensation claim. And what that is, it's a veteran that has passed away, their spouse is applying for a benefit. It's a service connected disability. It's the same benefit a widow is going to get if their service member dies on the battlefield. They die from wounds sustained from the battlefield, whether it was in World War II, Vietnam, Korea, or the Gulf War, or even peace time. If there was a service connected disability that they ended up passing away from, these surviving spouses are entitled to that as long as everything checks out. Normally these claims, prior to automation and direct upload, these claims would take roughly a month to a month and a half at the bare minimum. A lot of times we were actually looking at two months.

Jeremy Miller: I did one here, recently that we applied, and seven days later, she had a check in her account and she was approved for DIC. What would happen before is I would do the claim. I would send it in through mail, or even when we had direct sending to our quality assurance, it would go in essentially that day. But then at our quality assurance team, it would take a week or so for them to get it in. They would get it in the mail the same day, don't get me wrong. They would get it in the mail the same day, but it would take a week to get to the processing station in Minneapolis, St. Paul, or wherever they needed to send it. It would go through the processing of opening the mail and then uploading everything to the VA system, verifying this veteran goes with this account, setting up their account, whatever. That process took about a month for the VA to actually get it to somebody's desk, where they could actually work on it. And as Eric mentioned with the back load, these [inaudible 00:23:49] were already under heavy strain to get these things done as quickly as possible. And to throw in the mix, the spouse has passed away, they've had to come up with funds for a funeral, they no longer have at least half the income that they had before. Getting these things turned out in a rapid timeframe is crazy to try to get done. But again, with direct upload, we've cut off close to three weeks of that time period, if not more. Three weeks minimum, and we're getting the check out, and I have people that are coming in and saying, "I thought this was going to take a while." Normally it would, but we have some systems in place that allow it to go a little smoother now.

Eric Rohleder: Obviously, that's our number one mission is to advocate for veterans. We're able to advise them better. We're able to assist them better. We are able to submit their claims better and faster.

Jeremy Miller: The responsiveness of Tyler and ETK folks to assess what we need and to make that happen quickly. I've never worked with a team that does this so well. If we need a form changed, if we need adjustments made that are... If anybody's ever done veteran services, they know there's going to be hiccups along the way. That's whether it's dealing on the paperwork side or on the VA side, it's going to be hiccups and you're going to have delays and things like that. One of the things that I very much appreciate about Tyler is their willingness to get back with me the same day that says, "Here's the solution to the problem, we'll have it on the next upload." Or, "Here is what we need you to do right now to make this work a little bit better." And they show us better how their system works. One of the huge benefits that I've recently been using much more is their searchability. Oh my goodness. You can go through... This is what's going to pay for the product, I believe, is the ability to go through and find claims that we've done for veterans and separate it out to which veterans are we talking about are we talking about Vietnam, World War II? And then to be able to enter the actual number data on how much a veteran brings to their community, as far as income of funds, as far as veteran services overall. It shows the value of what people need to see is how are we helping these veterans?

Jeremy Miller: And that's truly a blessing for me to be able to see the overall big picture of how is our organization doing as far as helping veterans and processing of claims and just getting the veterans what they need. And certainly at a legislative level, we need to show our value as an agency to show how this is bringing in resources for the state of Kansas. We know everything goes down to money. We get that, but here's a way that we can show better specifically how that money is all coming in and show the worth of our agency for the veterans in our state.

Jeff Harrell: Well, that is fantastic, Jeremy. Eric and Jeremy, thank you both first of all, for your service. As a son and grandson of veterans, really appreciate your service to our country and what you do for veterans every day. If someone wanted to contact you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jeremy Miller: Certainly. My email is Jeremy, J-E-R-E-M-Y dot Miller, M-I-L-L-E-R at KS dot G-O-V.

Eric Rohleder: Ericrohleder@ks.gov. So, E-R-I-C dot R-O-H-L-E-D-E-R at KS dot G-O-V.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Eric, Jeremy, you guys are fantastic. Thanks again for joining me on the podcast.

Eric Rohleder: Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Glad you're doing it. It's awesome.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I just love stories of people helping other people and really appreciate Eric and Jeremy and people just like them all over the country who are serving our veterans in this way. And I love the fact that automation and technology helps actually bridge the gap as they talked about, but also brings these benefits to veterans more quickly. Well, thanks so much for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast. My name is Jeff Harrell. I'm the Director of Content Marketing. I really appreciate you listening. We have new episodes dropping every other Monday. We've got lots of great plans for 2021. So hope that you'll join us again. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.