As I mentioned, there were about 853 participants in that survey, and we realized a few things through that. A lot of the questions were predominantly related to what their experience was on their end and where the biggest obstacles and challenges were.
What was a surprise to us is that not as many veterans as we thought were aware of My VAC Account, which is a faster way to apply for disability benefits. We are now going to really ramp up our information and communication related to applying for that account.
As I'm sure you've heard in your business, medical questionnaires and working with health professionals who are treating can be a bit of a challenge. We use the term “diagnosis” regularly, but that actually means a confirmed diagnosis from a medical professional, and while that may seem clear, we now know that's not crystal clear.
Some of the changes we'll be making are to use more plain language, user-friendly material upfront, working more closely with our intake staff where veterans can have a dialogue to make sure they better understand what's required.
More importantly, veterans were loud and clear: They want to know when their application is complete. They gave us some examples of time frames they thought would be acceptable to advise them if their application was complete. We're working with My VAC Account partners within Veterans Affairs Canada to improve what a veteran would see in their application by having more granularity about the stage and what's happening with their application at that point in time.
Those would be a few examples that I would offer.