Commissioner Astrue's other legacy project (or should I say vanity project?) is Quick Disability Determinations (QDD). No press release on this one, but new set of Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) instructions was released to the public today. Here is a brief definition of QDD:
The QDD process goes beyond Terminal Illness (TERI) and Presumptive Disability/Blindness (PD/PB) criteria to identify applicants with clearly disabling conditions whose medical evidence is readily available. With such applicants, a fully-favorable determination should be made quickly after receipt in the DDS (recommended timeframe is 20 days or less). A predictive model (PM) is used to identify QDD cases. A unique threshold selection, using scoring criteria, is set by the PM for each DDS which means that similar cases may or may not be identified as QDD cases depending on the DDS processing the case.
What I find comical about this new policy is that it requires the medical evidence to be "readily available." What does that mean exactly? One can't make a determination without any medical evidence in the record. Is the claimant's allegation that the records exist sufficient? I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteThere is already a policy in place that as soon as there is enough evidence in the record to make a favorable decision it needs to be done.