NADE Newsletter: Meetings, OIG Investigation, Legislative Proposal?, Differing Viewpoints On Testing For Malingering

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of Disability Determination Service employees, has issued its Spring 2008 Newsletter.

Some nuggets from the newsletter (with a couple of comment in brackets]:

• A description of a meeting between NADE leaders and Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security
• A reference to a "closed" meeting between Astrue and members of the House Social Security Subcommittee
  
• "The Inspector General is doing an audit of SSA and state DDSs in response to the CBS program which indicated there is a 'climate of denial'. The IG staff plan to speak with DDS examiners in several states and people have left the state DDS agencies." [I will make a fearless prediction that Social Security's Inspector General will not find a "climate of denial."]
• "Legislation is being developed to allow SSA to request health records without an actual release form. The legislation will offer the assurance that SSA has an Electronic signature on file. Legislation has also been proposed to require attorneys to use iAppeal, the internet appeal process." [Legislation? I had heard that Social Security was considering requiring attorneys to file appeals via the internet, but I had assumed that regulations would be proposed. Did NADE misunderstand? If it is legislation, what else would be in this legislative proposal?]
  

The newsletter contains what is described as an "independent response" that will be of interest to some. Here is an excerpt:

A RECENT POLICY CLARIFICATION to a DDS questioner by the Social Security Administration on whether “tests of malingering” have any value for SSA evaluations will have a chilling effect on the scientific responsibility of psychology examiners to assess the validity of their findings. We believe this policy to be misguided, for it leads to inaccurate assessment in psychological consultative examinations (PCEs), and it can actually be harmful in permitting fraud, waste, and abuse of the system.

The policy statement claims that “malingering cannot be proven with tests,” and “malingering is one aspect of the larger sphere of inaccurate self-report.” The writer also said that the claimant who is likely to be malingering may have true impairment, and thus it is difficult to distinguish limiting effects of impairment from evidence that the impairment is fabricated or exaggerated. Echoing statements to the Administrative Law Judges (2005) by Dr. Terrence Dunlop, chief psychologist for DDS, the writer concludes that Symptom Validity Tests (SVT) are not “programmatically useful” in resolving the issue of credibility of claimants, and that there is no “gold standard” for establishing symptom validity.

This policy ignores the rigorous scientific development of symptom validity testing and malingering assessment over the last 10-15 years ...