Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri asked Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to study whether Social Security was devoting adequate resources to resolving the hearing backlog in her state. OIG has produced a report saying that Social Security has. The report contains some statistics by region that I had not seen previously. These statistics certainly back up the assurance given the Senator.
I have reproduced some of these statistics below. Limitations in Blogger make it impossible for me to reproduce the tables as well as I would like but I think you can figure out what it says.
What is interesting is how Social Security has targeted the backlogs. This is not an across the board effort. Social Security is targeting those areas with the largest backlogs. Areas with low backlogs are seeing no improvement or a worsening. This is as it should be. This is a national program. It should take roughly the same length of time to get a hearing whether you are in Boston, Atlanta, Denver or San Francisco. There have been terrible disparities which must be resolved. I wish I knew how the disparities got so bad. I would also like to know how the Boston Region could have a huge increase in the number of cases awaiting a hearing at the same time it decreased the average length of time to get a disposition on closed cases. That does not make sense.
I have reproduced some of these statistics below. Limitations in Blogger make it impossible for me to reproduce the tables as well as I would like but I think you can figure out what it says.
What is interesting is how Social Security has targeted the backlogs. This is not an across the board effort. Social Security is targeting those areas with the largest backlogs. Areas with low backlogs are seeing no improvement or a worsening. This is as it should be. This is a national program. It should take roughly the same length of time to get a hearing whether you are in Boston, Atlanta, Denver or San Francisco. There have been terrible disparities which must be resolved. I wish I knew how the disparities got so bad. I would also like to know how the Boston Region could have a huge increase in the number of cases awaiting a hearing at the same time it decreased the average length of time to get a disposition on closed cases. That does not make sense.
Number Of Cases Awaiting A Hearing Before A Social Security Administrative Law Judge As of September 30, 2008 And September 30, 2009 And Percent Change Per Social Security Region
Kansas City 39,622 33,001 -16.7%Atlanta 216,407 188,566 -12.9%
Chicago 143,188 125,820 -12.1%
Seattle 24,605 22,117 -10.1%
New York 71,295 65,310 -8.4%
Dallas 72,485 69,971 -3.5%
San Francisco 77,829 79,419 +2.0%
Philadelphia 73,426 77,273 +5.2%
Denver 19,934 21,544 +8.1%
Boston 19,780 28,199 +42.6%
National Hearing Centers 2,242 11,602 +417.5%
Totals 760,813 722,822 -5.0%
Average Processing Time of Administrative Law Judge Dispositions As Of September 30, 2008 And September 30, 2009 In Days And Percent Change By Social Security Region
New York 519 465 -10.4%
Chicago 665 615 -7.5%
Seattle 561 531 -5.3%
Boston 373 356 -4.6%
Kansas City 556 531 -4.5%
Atlanta 551 528 -4.2%
Philadelphia 393 402 +2.3%
Denver 429 447 +4.2%
San Francisco 436 472 8.3%
National Hearing Centers 615 687 +11.7%
National Average 514 491 -4.5%
5 comments:
SSA cooks its books
The answer to your question about the Boston Region is the DSI bubble. Since DSI took over a year to process recons from five New England states, by last summer the pending in Boston Region ODAR's was very low. A bunch of cases were then processed very quickly over the past year. In Oct and Nov 2008, DSI dumped tens of thousands of over a year old, undeveloped cases onto the 2009 hearing market by making summary "recon" denials. That accounts for the recent large numbers yet quicker processing time.
Anon. #1 - How did you find out?
I'm not Anon #1, but this phenomenon has been described in SSA reports about whether to keep or scrap the DSI. Hearing-type development was not required for the quasi-"recon" summary denials by the FedRO's in DSI, so it looks like things went faster at those ODAR's.
As the OIG report describes, several KC Region ODAR's have had the opposite phenomenon occur because Missouri is a prototype state, where recon is completely eliminated. After the intial denial, the claimant immediately requests an ALJ hearing. This flooded several KC Region ODAR's with thousands of claims that arrived earlier than would have been expected.
This is only half the story. While T2 hearing approvals are sent to PC where they are fairly quickly paid, SSI hearing approvals are sent to the FO's where they can sit for weeks or months before being paid. And because of the installment payment requirements, it can be a year after the first payment before all of a claimants retro SSI payments are received.
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