Vets Hit VA, DoD For Ditching Records Project

Leaders of several of the country's veterans' service organizations told lawmakers on Thursday that they need to push the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense to keep going with a plan to integrate the medical records of troops and veterans.

During a two-hour hearing before a joint meeting of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs committees, representatives of the veterans' groups slammed the VA for a failure of leadership over the abandoned medical records and also the claims backlog whose end is nowhere in sight.

"We recommend your committees … demand the DoD and the VA to move forward and get the job done," retired Army Col. Bob Norton, deputy director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America, told a joint meeting of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs committees...