OIG Report On Processing Time

Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has done a report on the agency's processing times on Social Security disability claims. It seems to me to show that a lot of the processing time figures given out by Social Security over the years may be misleading or at least may not accurately reflect what a claimant would experience. OIG was doing a study on calendar year 2006. Social Security reported that in 2006, the average processing time at the initial level was 88 days, 483 days at the hearing level and 203 days at the Appeals Council. OIG's audit found that it actually took 131 days at the inital level, 532 days at the hearing level and 242 days at the Appeals Council. OIG's description of how they did this study could be better, but it appears that the difference is that OIG included the time it took for the agency to get a new claim or appeal to the desk of the person who was supposed to work on it and also included the time it took for favorable and unfavorable decisions to be processed after they were made, including the time it took to compute and pay benefits when favorable decisions were made. It looks like OIG did not include the time it took claimants to file appeals, so the actual experience of a claimant would be even worse.