VA understood that the older “Legacy” claims and appeals process was slow and confusing, and, in response, worked with Congress who passed the Veteran Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 (AMA), also known as the modernized review system. You can read the full Public Law. This new review system offers Veterans more choice regarding the type of review they select when they disagree with a VA decision denying a benefit. In addition, the law ensures that Veterans and appellants can preserve the earliest effective date possible by continuously pursuing their claim. This means that as long as a Veteran continuously appeals their claim within the allotted time period, the effective date can go back to the first claim, if it is eventually granted.

The AMA also allows Veterans and appellants to seek an additional review by VA by filing a supplemental claim if the Board denies relief. Prior to this change, the only option for Appellants was to appeal the Board’s denial to the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims…a much longer process. Under the AMA, appellants can instead file a supplemental claim with the Agency of Original Jurisdiction (usually the Veterans Benefits Administration) for review of new and relevant evidence following a Board decision. For example, if a Board AMA decision denies an appealed issue, then the Veteran has an entire year to add any missing or additional evidence to their file and resubmit a supplemental claim for VA’s reconsideration. If VA then grants the supplemental claim, the effective date can be set to when the Veteran first filed their initial claim on that issue. Under AMA, it currently takes VA less than a few months to decide whether a supplemental claim can be granted. However, if an Appellant opts to appeal to the Court, that process can take anywhere from 1-2 years for Court judges to fully review the case according to the Court’s most recent annual reports.

In recent years, the Board has resolved well over 115,000 appeals annually as the number of decisions issued each year has been steadily rising. However, the persistent challenge has been how many Legacy system appeals continued to be active long after the passage of the Appeals Modernization Act of 2017. There were nearly 475,000 Legacy system appeals waiting for a decision nine years ago and the drop over the next few years was substantial. However, the reduction in pending Legacy system appeals has slowed considerably due to necessary remands because of ever-changing circumstances in cases. Currently, 46 percent of all remanded Legacy system cases pending at the Board have been previously adjudicated by the Board at least two times, and nearly 10 percent have been previously adjudicated at least four times. There were still just under 23,000 Legacy appeals not fully resolved by VA at the end of March FY 2026, of which 18,186 were at the Board for resolution: 

Congress passed the AMA because it was taking an average of 7-10 years to fully resolve appeals under the older Legacy system. Unsurprisingly, the same procedural challenges of that system have persisted. It currently takes an average of more than 8 years to fully resolve a Legacy appeal but well under an average of 2 years to fully resolve most AMA appeals. VA continues to balance this lingering workload of Legacy system cases against the increasing number of Veterans who have filed newer appeals under the AMA during the past five years. This careful balance of trying to keep the promise of resolving older Legacy cases while working newer AMA cases has proven to be incredibly challenging. AMA inventories of pending appeals continued to rise as the Board was forced to re-adjudicate Legacy system cases multiple times until full resolution of all issues in each case. The good news is that over 95 percent of pending Legacy appeals pending at the Board have already been adjudicated at least once by a Board judge. During the past 18 months, the ratio of Legacy and AMA cases adjudicated by the Board closely mirrors the ratio of Legacy and AMA appeals awaiting adjudication.

The inventory of appeals awaiting a decision at the Board has dropped during each of the last three years because the Board is now able to adjudicate higher numbers of AMA cases. The total pending appeals inventory (AMA and Legacy) peaked at just over 216,000 appeals in April 2023 and increases in Board personnel since the end of FY 2022 have brought the inventory down by 16 percent to just under 181,000 at the end of March 2026. Below is a seven-year trend of changes in both pending and decided appeals at the Board:

As the Legacy system cases continue to draw down, the Board is deciding an ever-increasing number of AMA appeals each year. During the first years after AMA implementation, relatively few AMA cases were decided because the Legacy appeals system inventory was still so large. Currently, nearly 90% of all cases decided each week are appeals filed under the newer AMA system. As shown in the figures below, this monthly output is reflective of pending appeal trends where roughly 90% of appeals awaiting adjudication are AMA cases.

Between April 2023 to March of 2026, Legacy system appeals pending at the Board dropped by more than 35,000. Between July 2024 and March of 2026, the Board reduced pending AMA appeals by over 33,000 appeals. The three-year history of monthly appeals pending shown in the chart below illustrates these dramatic improvements.

Note: Monthly appeals pending includes appeals from all VA administrations (VBA, VHA, and NCA), a majority of which (greater than 90%) are compensation and pension appeals.

It is important to note that the Veteran-related AMA appeals pending at the Board is much lower than shown above for FY 2024-2026.  In August 2024, there was a significant influx of VHA third-party contract provider appeals which were moved from the pre-docket queue to the Board’s docket. This primarily impacted the AMA Direct and Evidence Submission dockets and grossly distorted publicly reported timeliness data about average days pending on those two dockets. While generically labeled as “medical reimbursement” appeals in data reporting systems, the overwhelming majority of these non-rating VHA appeals concern non-Veteran health care providers seeking contract reimbursement from VHA. Currently, there are roughly 23,000 pending AMA appeals that are not related to Veterans or their dependents seeking relief at the Board. Therefore, the Board is taking care to ensure these non-Veteran 3rd party contract-related VHA appeals in the AMA dockets are appropriately distinguished from other appeals filed by Veterans, dependents, and other beneficiaries. This includes publishing separate wait time data (average days pending and average days to complete) for Board appeals from Veterans and their dependents.

Despite working through the challenges of operating in two appeals systems during the transition from an all-Legacy appeals system to a mostly-AMA system, the Board’s addition of more judges and counsel led to ever-increasing numbers of decisions issued each month during the past several years. In sum, Board judges were adjudicating an average of 7,900 appeals per month in FY 2022, and now are consistently adjudicating over 2,500 more cases each month: an average of about 10,400 per month during FY 2025 and FY 2026.

The most important change on behalf of Veterans has been the drastic reduction in wait times for AMA cases during the past 2 years (see More Board Personnel Address Pending AMA Appeals and Wait Times). Veterans are also getting better results under the AMA system compared to the older Legacy system (see AMA Appeals System shows Improvements Over Legacy System).

As shown below, AMA appeal wait times are significantly better than under the older Legacy appeals system. For example, a Direct docket appeal filed today is likely to be decided well under the 365-day goal set by Congress for that docket.