KENS 5 asked the VA why still-living veterans are being wrongly marked as deceased. The VA’s response: They are still accurate more than 99 percent of the time.
SAN ANTONIO — The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is accidentally marking veterans as deceased when they are still very much alive.
On Tuesday the VA told KENS they have updated the records of more than 820,000 beneficiaries who passed away with an accuracy rate of 99.4 percent from 2021 to 2025. Unfortunately, that means 4,920 veteran records would have been updated incorrectly, with the veteran labeled as deceased, during that time.
The wife of one veteran says it shouldn’t be happening at all.
In January, Deana Bartholomew opened a letter from the government that said her husband was dead.
“It’s really awful,” She said. “I couldn’t believe if I was a widow I could find out like this. It was super freaky.”
Her husband, David Bartholomew, was very much alive and still at home at the time. He later told KENS 5 he was just thankful she knew it was a mistake.
“I can’t imagine her emotional state had there been one second that she thought this was real and I’m gone,” David Bartholomew said.
David wasn’t happy about the mistake, but he was more upset that the government pulled thousands of dollars out of their bank account because they thought he was dead. Fortunately, after the couple called KENS 5, the VA started fixing the benefits issue just a few days later.
Army Veteran Dorinda DeGroff found out she was dead when she visited a health care provider in October of 2025.
“He said ‘I hate to tell you this Dorinda but you are deceased,” Degroff said. “I was floored. I wasn’t sure what to do or say. I said, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
DeGroff said staff at that location sent an email to try and fix it. When she later visited the VA location on Highway 151 she found out she was still marked as deceased and staff then sent another email. She said it wasn’t fixed until January of 2026.
Both veterans still want to know why they were killed in the VA’s system.
“I want there to be a way that is apologetic, that claims responsibility, provides exactly what happened,” Deana Bartholomew said. “That’s what’s important to me.”
In January, the VA had told KENS 5 that their Houston office would be looking into the issue. Still, a month later, Deana Bartholomew said she still had not received any explanation of what happened from the VA.
KENS 5 reached back out to the VA and asked for the result of that investigation, for an explanation of why this happening across the country, and for the steps the VA could take to reduce the issue in the future.
A VA spokesperson sent the following response:
From FY2021-2025, VA updated the records of more than 820,000 beneficiaries who passed away with an accuracy rate of 99.4 percent. When errors occur, VA moves quickly to correct them, as it did in this case.
The VA had previously told KENS 5, “The Houston VA Regional Office is conducting a review to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future to other Veterans.” KENS 5 again asked for the result of that review but did not hear back.
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