Time to decision, by year and condition
How long a Vaccine Injury Compensation Program petition takes from filing to final decision, tracked year by year and by alleged condition. The median hides the problem: the interesting number is the share of cases that take more than three years, which is where contested causation claims sit.
By year decided for Encephalitis / encephalopathy
| Year | Decisions | Median | 75th pct | Over 3 yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 29 | 25 mo | 48 mo | 34% |
| 2015 | 24 | 19 mo | 46 mo | 33% |
| 2016 | 38 | 26 mo | 40 mo | 37% |
| 2017 | 28 | 22 mo | 43 mo | 32% |
| 2018 | 25 | 22 mo | 42 mo | 32% |
| 2020 | 22 | 39 mo | 60 mo | 55% |
| 2025 | 28 | 67 mo | 84 mo | 86% |
Why vaccine-injury cases take as long as they do
The Vaccine Act set a 240-day target for a Special Master's decision, and the statute lets a petitioner leave the program and sue in civil court if that deadline passes. In practice almost nobody leaves, because the tort route is harder, so the deadline is routinely waived and the effective clock is the program's capacity. Filings roughly quadrupled after shoulder injuries were added to the Vaccine Injury Table in 2017, and the number of Special Masters did not grow with them.
Two things stretch a case. The first is the medical record: onset dates, treatment histories and expert reports have to be assembled before the government files its Rule 4(c) report, and each round of expert exchange adds months. The second is contested causation. A Table claim that the government concedes can close in about a year; an off-Table claim that goes to hearing, then to damages, then to a fee ruling, can run four years or longer. That is why the share of cases over three years is a better gauge of friction than the median.