We use a document called the VASRD, the VA “Schedule for Rating Disabilities”. The basic structure of it consists of increments of 10%, starting at zero and capping out at 100%. It's broken up into 15 different body systems: muscular, skeletal injury, neurological, etc. It breaks the body system up.
We're in the middle of a complete rewrite of that system. It's a five-year project. The final drafts will be sent to the next level of concurrence by the end of 2014. We're going back and looking at the advances in medical science and incorporating those advances into the new rating schedule. I'll give you a basic example that will be plain to anybody.
Not too long ago, a knee-replacement surgery put somebody flat on their back for six months, and then there was another six months of recuperation. My cousin had his hip replaced and 90 days later we were on the golf course walking around. The advances in medical science in a case like that...I would've paid 100% disability for 14 months under the old system, but under the new system, with the advances of medical science, I don't need to pay that individual for 14 months. They're fully functional and back to work in 90 to 120 days. That kind of advance in medical science needs to be captured in our rating schedule.
If you take that and expand it to all the different body systems, you can see that there's going to be a multitude of things that need to be changed. The document we have was originally written in the 1940s, and it's been a series of actions going forward. Every couple of years, we'll update our version or change a few things and move it forward. This is the first time since 1945 that it's a top-to-bottom restructure of the entire document, body system by body system.