I hear more and more frequent references to employees of Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR), which is where Social Security's Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) work, being subjected to greater productivity pressures than in the past. To a point, productivity pressure is a good thing. The public is suffering because of backlogs at Social Security. Public servants should be encouraged to work hard to deal with those backlogs. The other side of the coin is that excessive pressure can have adverse consequences -- higher error rates, employees taking inappropriate shortcuts (such as giving priority to quick, easy cases) and frustrated, discouraged employees.
If you work at ODAR, what has been your recent experience with productivity pressure? Post your comment below. I am not looking for employees of other parts of the Social Security Administration to say that it is much worse where they are than it can possibly be at ODAR. or that ODAR employees are lazy. That may or may not be true, but if you have not worked at both places, you really cannot know and that is not the sort of information I am trying to gather anyway. Also, I am not looking for ODAR employees to say that while they and others doing their job are being subjected to terrible pressure and are working very, very hard, some other group of employees at ODAR has it easy. Tell us about what you are experiencing, rather than trying to blame someone else.
If you work at ODAR, what has been your recent experience with productivity pressure? Post your comment below. I am not looking for employees of other parts of the Social Security Administration to say that it is much worse where they are than it can possibly be at ODAR. or that ODAR employees are lazy. That may or may not be true, but if you have not worked at both places, you really cannot know and that is not the sort of information I am trying to gather anyway. Also, I am not looking for ODAR employees to say that while they and others doing their job are being subjected to terrible pressure and are working very, very hard, some other group of employees at ODAR has it easy. Tell us about what you are experiencing, rather than trying to blame someone else.
14 comments:
Nationally, expectations have been clearly communicated to ODAR writers (Attorney-Advisors and Paralegals), that we are to produce affirmations (including partially favorables and closed periods), in 8 hours and to produce reversals in 4 hours.
How this is actually implemented depends on the management of each ODAR office, and the implementation strategy can vary widely. Offices with the lowest morale tend to implement these requirements very strictly, even to the extent of taking an affirmation from a writer once the alloted time is up and giving it to the ALJ regardless of how complete the affirmation is at the time. From my understanding, that situation is fairly rare and the union is keeping a closer eye on such offices.
In my particular office, morale is fairly good for a number of reasons: 1) open lines of communication between writers and ALJs (in some other offices ALJs want absolutely no input from writers, whether attorneys or paralegals - and the quality of decisions suffers accordingly); 2) relative transparency of management expectations and pressures. If we need to spend 2 days on an affirmation to make it legally defensible, we can do so; 3) #2 is possible because our office currently has a good ratio of reversals-to-affirmations, about 65/35. Most reversals can be completed in less than 4 hours, thus allowing extra time to spend on affirmations as-needed. This, of course, is a luxury not afforded to writers in offices with a high denial rate and the pressures in those offices are higher accordingly.
No doubt ODAR is a production environment very unlike what a law clerk at a state or federal district or appellate court would experience. 8-hours per affirmation can cause significant stress depending on management, and result in a concomitant reduction in decision quality which, of course, significantly lessens job satisfaction.
The first comment is nicely put. My office also has good morale and pretty good communication among all staff. I would guess our ratio is 60/40 affirmation/reversal.
Senior case techs are under pulling pressure which means they abandoned removing duplicates and arranging pages of an exhibit in date order about a year ago. Saves them time but adds to the time needed for the ALJ to review the file and writer to write it. False economy of time
Writers have the same pressures above stated. I've noticed a great decline in quality. Very little rationale or explanation for the findings are included and spell-check is a thing of the past.
ALJ' are given a quota now of 500 to 700 decisions a year. While some may quarrel with the term quota, that's what it is. If you look at the hours in a work year -- 2080 minus 80 hours for 10 federal holidays minus 160 hours of annual leave, divided by 500 cases, that leaves less than 4 hours that an ALJ can devote to a case. Actually, it is even less when you consider that after 15 years, the ALJ has even more annual leave; that ALJ's and families sometimes get sick and miss work because of that; and that more than 500 cases must be scheduled and reviewed in order to arrive at 500 dispositions.
In my case, I have to drive more than an hour one way when I conduct hearings at remote sites -- a waste of time occasioned by the poor quality of our video hearing equipment. I don't complain about that; I only point it out to say hour spent driving are hours not spent working on cases.
I would hope claimants and attorneys are shocked that an ALJ has less than 4 hours to devote to their case, including hearing time. If you look at pay percentages for 2007 and 2008, I think you will generally find most ALJs pay more now -- because of time pressure. I think you will find more errors, poorer written decisions and what should be a higher remand rate. Oddly, our office was getting a far higher number of remands in 2006 and 2007. In 2008, we stopped getting remands. This, I suspect, is because of staff shortages at the appeals council.
Pencil pushers in Baltimore can pontificate all they want about how computers obviate the need for staff, but ODAR offices have gotten to the point where we can no longer give much consideration to cases. Claimants are becoming statistics rather than people. Whether a particular case is paid or denied at ODAR, the chances are far greater now than 10 years ago that it was poorly decided.
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oops. I meant our office is 60/40 reversal/affirmation
ODAR is dysfunctional. It's problems cannot be fixed. Ergo, it should be shot
Three comments:
(1) The pressure applied varies greatly by office and by Region. I have a friend in one region that publishes the writing stats for all the writers in the region in rank order by code number. The list is distributed each month and highlighted in three colors with those generally in the PIA range in green, the overproducers in yellow and the low producers in red. The onset of this document has been so detrimental to morale. The writers in this office are good, solid writers, but all are in the "middle" group and have to endure "helpful" monthly staff meeting designed to improve productivity. Nothing like being constantly reminded you are not quite good enough to improve work ethic, eh.
(2) as a result of the productivity index, I personally know a half dozen people with 15+ years experience as a writer who plan on turning in their retirement papers this year. They say the stress is just not worth it. Management won't know what hit them as these good experienced writers quit - particularly since the clerical staff does not have the same background to successfully promote into the paralegal slots.
(3) it is MUCH more difficult to write decisions now that the clerks no longer have to remove duplicates and put evidence in order. I can't imagine how difficult it is for the judges to review cases for hearing. They desparately need to return to real work up of cases, including case development. Going back to the medical summaries the LAs used to do would help them with training and help the judges with issue identification, but we will never see that again.
ODAR can be fixed - The Powers That Be need to recognize that while technology is an essential tool, it is not an end all be all answer. They have to get serious about staffing at all levels.
I was with ODAR for more than 10 years. The unfortunate reality is that the "Due Process Hearing" is no longer being protected by those with a License to Practice Law and a DUTY to protect Due Process. The one and ONLY focus of ODAR managers is PRODUCTION and those with who have taken an oath to protect Due Process, such as agency Judges and Attorneys, have been accused of being lazy because they have taken the time required to provide the Constitutionally mandated Due Process considerations in each and every case. Now, those ALJs and Attorneys have had to either leave the agency, be fired (constructively or actually), or, to some cases, to some degree, sell out, in order to protect their jobs.
One, and only one, example is that ALJ's, who have the DUTY, according to the law, to direct the development of the record, in most cases are not even assigned a case until after all development occurs and it is scheduled, completely denying him/her the ABILITY to direct any meaningful development. This development is left to the clerical staff. Judges are punished if they do "too much" (in the eyes of the HOCALJ) development post-hearing.
Within ODAR there is much talk by managers about the "balance" of quanity versus quality. It came as quite a shock to me that "Due Process" is only given if time allows. Because of the backlog "quality" is sacrificed secondary to PRODUCTION pressure by managers. By the way, if the production numbers "reach goal" the managers are PAID big bonuses (many times in the five digit range), kinda like those received by the executives in Wall Street firms, the Banks, and the Auto Makers.
The second commenter suggests there has been a reduction in AC remands related to staffing. Sure enough, staffing is a problem at the AC level. But I'm strongly inclined to think that what the second commenter has noticed about a drop in AC remands has more to do with adjudicatory attitude than staffing for adjudication.
The second comment above includes these things:
1. "I've noticed a great decline in quality. Very little rationale or explanation for the findings are included and spell-check is a thing of the past."
2. "Oddly, our office was getting a far higher number of remands in 2006 and 2007. In 2008, we stopped getting remands. This, I suspect, is because of staff shortages at the appeals council."
I share the first impression. The second impression might well be an accurate locally, but statistics updated through the second quarter of 2008 don't bear it out nationally. Sure enough the AC's grant review/remand rate is down. But only by some few points, from 28-30% down to somewhere around 25%.
A first thought about this less-than-huge drop in the rate of remand is that it represents a marginal increase in deference to ALJ findings, even when these are not well explained, and even when the ALJ's decision will predictably run into problems on civil action.
A second thought is that if the impression about a decrease in quality quoted above is correct, then the relatively small decrease in the rate of AC remand represents a relatively large increase in how much the AC will swallow in terms of poorly articulated decisions with defensibility problems.
A third thought has to do with what part of the AC remand rate has to do with dismissals. ALJs are doing a ton of them. These seem marked by the same problems with quality as decisions. My impression, admittedly somewhat tenuous, is that the AC is NOT cutting the ALJs much slack on dismissals. There's some possibility that the 25% remand rate includes a higher portion of remands after ALJ dismissal than has historically been the case. If true, this is a factor that would lend itself even more to the comment about fewer AC remands on decisions.
By the way, I have second hand report that ALJs at this last year's training seminar were practically foaming at the mouth about AC remands on cases with ALJ dismissals.
The comments about pressures on the writers are correct, so far as my observation in my office goes.
My office has lost all of its experienced legal assistants. The new ones are, through no fault of their own, poorly trained and told to ignore the tough questions. They do not pull out duplicates. They do not organize the evidence. They do not summarize the evidence. (Their GS ratings may be in jeopardy.)
The electronic files have made it exceptionally difficult for the judges and writers to work--at least in my office. Unlike the outside world, we do no have .tiff to .pdf converters. Individual exhibits and pages can take many minutes to open. Every page has to be opened separately. This takes way too long. A page can be converted to WORD, but only one page at a time. The computers crash a lot. That seems to be because there is not enough memory. Also it is now very difficult to take work home, because not all of the info in the files (alerts, judge's notes, procedural history) cannot be copied onto a disc. And because there are too many security steps, when all they needs is to put everything on CDs that cannot be copied.
Management talks about quality, but does NOTHING about it. Only pushes production. Everybody has quotas (even when they are called "goals"). Everybody is constantly harassed with memos about how your numbers are doing this month, this week, this minute. the numbers they want are crazy--500 to 700 decisions a year. Cannot be done with reduced staff. The e-DIB slowed everything down. ODAR needs to be run by employees rotating in from the field offices and hearing offices.
They've foamed at the mouth over AC remands of dismissals for years, whining loudly whenever given the chance. While they blame the AC, what they're really upset about is the policy, which they do not adhere to--and thus get remands when the AC does apply it properly. The policy (what documentation steps are required to justify a dismissal) has been reviewed repeatedly over the years and upheld as what's minimally required for due process.
There is serious pressure within my office to meet the quota established by SSA management. The result is a terrible decline in quality. Case files are poorly worked up or are not worked up at all. This is terribly false economy because the savings in case technician time more than doubles the time required to be spent by ALJs and writers.
SSA management simply does not care if we have reasonable evidence with which to decide a case or not. CE doctors are not sent medical records to review as part of their examination. Quite often their reports are less than sufficient and management insists that we may not ask them questions. If we ask for a CE post hearing, we are not allowed to send more than 25 pages of records. Taking time to ask questions of treating physicians is simply not allowed by the 2 ½ hour per case time limit imposed by the agency management.
The one way we can meet quotas is simply to pay the cases. No one reviews favorable decisions, however for the price of a first-class stamp unfavorable decisions will be combed by a team of "experts" who seek diligently to find anything wrong with an unfavorable decision. The agency has quit doing own motion reviews. Those who pay more than 1000 cases a year without reading the file are praised, rewarded and promoted. The message could not be more clear that we are to pay the backlog down without regard for the trust fund.
The Agency management seems to believe that use of computers will greatly increase production. Most of us in my office spend a great deal of time sitting in front of the computer waiting for a response. Frequently, one part or another of the system has crashed. The agency's reliance on computers has been terribly misplaced because they have not upgraded the system to keep pace with the demands they have placed on it.
Our office is a sweatshop. Several people have been suspended, written up for trivial things, reprimanded, counseled, and generally harassed. Congress has given ODAR the green light to use the most hostile work environment imaginable to deal with the backlog. It is a shame.
I agree with all comments. The problem, as I see it, is a complete disregard on the part of management, who behave as though they are front line automotive assembly line supervisors with in reality, the respective education-lucky if they have a H.S. education, that we at ODAR do not produce widgets, we are dealing with peoples lives. Cases sitting on supervisors desks for months on end that should have been paid at the initial level but assigned to a SA for writing a favorable on the record 6 to 12 months after it hits the ODAR office is just unacceptable. How is one supposed to take the so-called managers seriously when they jump up and down about numbers?
The SA program needs to be fully implemented to have any meaningful reduction of the backlog. The reality in our office is that ALJ, in most cases, lends nothing to the production of cases, they are simply figure heads who say pay or deny and some are consistently wrong on even this small decision as frankly they wouldn't know a listing if it hit them in the face.
"Congress has given ODAR the green light to use the most hostile work environment imaginable to deal with the backlog. It is a shame."
How so? I think your frustration, and I feel it, is misplaced. This isn't the work of Congress it's the work of misguided so-called management struggling to show Congress that they are doing everything in their power to reduce the backlog. It will ultimately be the nails in their coffins as anyone with half a brain knows it just a veil that will be pierced. There no hiding the inevitable of a complete overhaul and management knows they are the target thus this knee jerk and yet another ill planned measure to increase production, which is just another example of their all too numerous deficiencies. You can't get blood from a stone.
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