Oct 7, 2009

They Call It "Conflicting Goals" -- I Call It Bureaucracy At Its Worst

From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) on Aged Claims At The Hearing Level (emphasis added):
In our interviews, one Regional Chief ALJ [Administrative Law Judge] stated that conflicting timeliness goals in the past contributed to hearing offices ignoring the oldest claims. For instance, during FY [Fiscal Year] 2002, ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] set timeliness goals for percent of claims processed in 180 days and 270 days. This observation is consistent with comments made during earlier audits. In 2003, during audit work on best practices at hearing offices, an OCALJ [Office of Chief ALJ] official noted that the hearing offices were facing competing goals on dispositions and timeliness. Since aged claims could take more time to process, they would be put aside to allow an office to process more claims and meet shorter timeliness goals. This official questioned the logic of having goals that ran counter to the “oldest claims first” approach. Our review of Agency reports found examples of this focus on shorter-term goals, such as a FY 2002 annual report stating, “Of the more than 532,000 claims processed, we decided nearly 18 percent within 180 days of the request for hearing, slightly below our 20 percent goal.”

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The goals in 2002 and 2003 have little to do with the backlogs in 2009. Now that the goal for the past few years has been to eliminate the oldest cases, there is a negative effect which is delaying cases that could be easy and quick.

For example, a notable finding from the report after studying the oldest cases was that the largest delay was at the front end after receiving the case when nothing was done for a long time. This delay in starting cases, presumably due to the effort to work on older cases, results in all cases getting older and in turn more difficult.

"Even with these delays, the greatest contributor to the age of these claims was the waiting period in Unassigned Workup (UNWK) status before anyone in the hearing office initiated action on the case. On average, about 54 percent of the age of the 1,000-day-old claims we reviewed related to their time in UNWK status."

Anonymous said...

Well, the backlogs build on each other, but the Poster is correct. Placing the emphasis on the oldest cases (usually the cases with complications) means that fewer decisions can issue. The Poster is also correct that the largest backlog is in workup (file completion and organization). Partially, this can be laid at the door of the Republican Congress that consistently underfunded ODAR for so many years. Partially, it is the fault of the agency, which refuses to enact a simple rule requiring all relevant, extant evidence be filed electronically within 120 days of a request for hearing and updated yearly thereafter. Add a penalty for representatives for filing duplicative material.

No. It is not true that medical sources do not respond, although there are aberrations. Yes. SSA can pay the $15 for records of SSI claimants.

Bingo! Timely record. Complete record--no hiding evidence. Easy to organize.

Nobbins said...

This hearing backlog issue is getting tiresome. I don't see why everyone thinks it's so bad. It's really, really, really normal.

Poor people never get what they want. Whether it's civil rights, political power, or due process; if you're poor, you ain't getting squat without waiting in long lines for the inferior alternative.

It's called life. You want to fix backlogs, fix poverty.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the input, Rush.