Social Security's Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel is having a meeting on June 10 and 11. Here are a couple of items on the agenda:
- Clinical Inference in the Assessment of Mental Residual Functional Capacity -- Panel Discussion and Deliberation
- Subcommittee Chair Report – Mental/Cognitive Panel Discussion and Deliberation
I thought this panel was supposed to work on a replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), which has been used to determine whether alternative work exists that an impaired individual can perform when he or she is unable to perform past relevant work. What do these topics have to do with replacing the DOT? Do we have mission creep here? Do we have a panel working towards an entirely new method of determining disability?
3 comments:
I think they are looking for ways to quantify the mental demands of work so they relate more clearly to the RFC-accepted terms. I.e., what is "high-stress" work, etc.
Since it appears that the only one on the Advisory Panel knows anything about the DOT and its relationship to disability (Nancy Shor)they are obviously going off on their own with their own agenda which has nothing to do with their mission (unless Astrue has given them a mission which we know nothing about!??)
We can only hope that their report does not create more problems than the program already has.
Any DOT replacement may just increase denials. If an examiner uses a "closest match" DOT choice right now, the benefit goes to the claimant because his/her job is not precisely found, which means that a lower skill level variable used now..less likely for transferability, etc. I see the DOT replacement benefiting the Trust Fund over the long haul, which is precisely why SSA is eager to replace it.
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