Echo Queue: FNOD Notifications

[araposo-tistatech]

Background/context

A notification that an appellant has died can occur at any point of the appeals process. If a notification is received the case is processed as a death dismissal.

Currently, in the legacy context, there is a field in VACOLS where an RO or members of the Board can input a FNOD date. When an FNOD date is input an alert pops up (for any user who views the case) indicating the appellant has died and the case should be moved to a VLJ. If the case has not been assigned to a judge/attorney, the case is moved to location 66. Once in location 66 a report is pulled by the SCT team and DVC Staff Assistants to assign the cases to VLJs. Once assigned, VLJs assign the case to an attorney to begin the decision drafting process as a dismissal.

There are also cases where an FNOD date was not input into VACOLS, but the appellant has passed. In these cases the death needs to be verified by either the attorneys SSC assigned to the case or VLJ Support using a Social Security Administration system.

As Caseflow does not support expediting cases for death dismissals the cases are pulled out of Caseflow and moved to location 66. This is currently a manual process for multiple teams (Hearings & VLJ Support) Note: the current VLJ support work around will be addressed once the Death Dismissal thread of work is completed.

Complete write up of the legacy process located here.

Goals

The goal of this project is to add a notification in Caseflow when a Final Notice of Death is logged for a Veterans case.

Success criteria

Caseflow users are able to immediately see a notification and or flag when a FNOD date is added for the appellant.

Stakeholders

Attorneys
VLJ
VLJ Support
Litigation Support
Hearings Branch

Requirements/stories

User Story: As a an attorney and/or a VLJ I need to see an notification or indicator when a Notice of Death date was added to VBMS or VACOLS so I know what type of decision to draft.

Open questions

If the case is not currently distributed, but an FNOD date is added should the case move to the top of the distribution logic (similar to AOD cases)?

Should the Death Dismissals work be opened to up to other organizations not just VLJs? Per the Board, yes any user should be able to trigger the Death Dismissal process.

Should the Death Dismissals work be included here? The Board has approved completing the VLJ work before this epic.

Who needs to have the ability to move cases to location 66 (possibly anyone who looks at the case details in caseflow for any one of the following locations 55, 57, 81, & Caseflow)?

Will a case ever go back to VLJ support or lit support after a death dismissal has been drafted?

Aside from getting the case dispatched faster is there any other reason why the case is pulled out of Caseflow?

References/Resources

Mural of Process - https://app.mural.co/t/workqueue2001/m/workqueue2001/1585592742468/8bb0d9bb40f3d54337faf001c37123e2fc20574d

Product Brief - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jfj4xN5LHq0XQBsR44f0ikAh9hWAwZXForefyv7K-8s/edit#

Designs and workflows

Business value

Having the ability to view an indicator of an FNOD will allow users to act on these cases sooner rather then later. This will in turn allow death dismissals to be processed more efficiently.

Dependencies

#12211

[araposo-tistatech]

Closing, duplicate of #13131

[hschallhorn]

Reopening as #13131 is different work!

[pshahVA]

Category	Metric	Applicable?	Approx Impact	Notes
Reach	Veterans Impacted (annually)
Users Impacted
Technical Complexity	Level of effort		Medium
Alignment to Goals and ability to measure success	Increase adoption of caseflow? (estimated increase in # of users)
Support more appeal types? (estimated increase in # appeals)
Increase timeliness of claims?
Increase system ease of use?	x
Better Veteran experience?	x
Increase accuracy of appeals?
Timeliness	Increase speed of legacy inventory processing?	x
Increase speed of decision processing? (Which docket/lane)
Task time (how long does the task take today, how much faster could it be?)
Cost of Inaction	Is there a political impact if we don’t do this?
Number of Veterans or claims impacted is low, but the damage is high.		x	Veterans should handle NOD with tact and caution.
Damage to VA reputation.

[hschallhorn]

Engineers would love to know if some of this process can be automated by caseflow.

• Can certain tasks be automatically cancelled when caseflow notices a veteran has passed
• Can we move these cases to a certain user?
• Can we do the same for legacy appeals?

[GabbyTISTA]

Posting to maintain my access