On Monday the VA reported that the disability compensation claims backlog1 decreased by almost 4,000 claims. There are currently more than 74,000 claims in the backlog, meaning that they have been pending for more than 125 days. Since last week the total number of pending claims has increased by about 2,000 claims meaning there are more than 368,000 pending disability compensation claims overall. Those in the backlog make up about 20% of the total number of claims.

The VA has reduced the backlog by more than 88% since March 2013. Since that same time, the VA has processed 4,173 claims per week on average. In order to eliminate the backlog by the end of 2015, the VA will need to process about 6,200 claims per week for the 12 weeks remaining in this calendar year.

Unfortunately, the number of appeals pending at the VA continues to rise. There are more than 319,000 disability compensation claim appeals currently pending at the VA.

To read more about the VA disability compensation process and IAVA’s recommendations to eliminate the backlog, read . To hear more about veterans’ experiences with VA benefits and healthcare, visit  The Wait We Carry.

1 IAVA continues to track and report backlogged claims to include claims not counted in the VA’s Rating Bundle. IAVA does this because we believe that claims from all veterans and their families should be included in the goal to end the VA Backlog by 2015.