The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an association of employees of state disability determination agercies, has issued its Spring 2006 newsletter. The newsletter contains an interesting quote from Ruby Burrell, Associate Commissioner for Disability Determination: "In each region, overall DDS replacement rate will be 3 for every 4 employees lost. In contrast, the SSA Field offices will only be able to replace at a 1 for 3 rate while some of the other components within SSA will replace at a rate of 1 for every 5 employees lost." Burrell went on to state that Social Security's goal is to hold the backlog at the initial level to where it is at the moment, rather than to make any improvement. Merely holding the current level will be difficult with ongoing staff cuts at the same time as the workload is increasing. Burrell also stated that Social Security's goal is to have all states "independence day" certified by the end of calendar year 2006. "Independence day" means that the state agency is able to process all cases using Social Security's paperless EDIB system.
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