Social Security has released numbers indicating that payments of fees to attorneys and others for representing Social Security claimants are down about 15% since the beginning of the fiscal year, October 1, 2011. This indicates about a 15% drop in payments of back benefits to claimants as well. From what I am seeing, this payment slowdown is not getting better. It may be getting worse. The loss of overtime because of lack of operating funds accounts for some of this but I have a hard time blaming lack of overtime for the whole problem. I have heard reports that the settlement of a class action lawsuit concerning notices to blind claimants is part of the problem, as payment center personnel are now required to spend time calling blind recipients and reading notices to them. I have also heard that payment center personnel may now be involved in some way in identifying claimants to be targeted for continuing disability reviews. I do not know if the reports I have heard are accurate or whether they are anything like the whole story. Can anyone tell me what is going on? What is planned to deal with the usual problem of employees taking time off around Christmas because of "use it or lose it" with their annual leave? What is planned to deal with all the telephone calls that typically cause problems for the payment centers in January? If the current problems were to persist for an entire year, we would be in what I would consider an unimaginable situation where it is taking more than three months to get a claimant on benefits after they are approved. That isn't going to happen, is it?
31 comments:
It's like beating a dead horse. How long can a gear function without oil before it becomes squeaky? Retirements, lay-offs (part-time, annuitants), no overtime. It's the same complaints you've heard the past 6 months. It's true and its not getting better without it getting worse. There is simply not enough time in the day to efficiently process the workloads. It doesn't help that the phone lines are filled to the brim with individuals asking about payments. The combination of all of these issues result in a delay of service to normal business functions at SSA.
With regards to people who want to complain. It would be much more effective contacting your local congress wo/man then complaining to a district office or sending a letter to baltimore.
Support technicians are involved in reading the notices to the blind as part of that class action.
They have no impact on claim payment or attorney fees.
Yes, December through March are heavy months for putting technicians on the toll-free 800 line to answer calls. But as not all technicians do this, there are still some processing claims and appeals.
The real problem: We have 8 retirement events this week that will last about 15mins each. People have had more than enough time put in for an unreduced pension for years and with pay freezes, there is no incentive to stay. People leaving with no ability to hire and train more results in a slower turn-around on claims and appeals. That number is only going to increase.
What is your source and can you provide more detail regarding payment center employees targeting individuals for CDRs? If this were true it be outrageous. People should not be targeted based on how much they draw from SSDI. It would be completely outside SSA's legal procedures. Please give us more info on this.
Payment Center employees are not targeting individuals for CDR's...DPB's located in PSC's are helping states process Medical CDR's as an added workload.
Thanks for the clarification. That makes more sense.
It's the lack of overtime. PC7 used to have available OT of 8 hours Saturday, 6 on Sunday, 2 hours per day M-F.
Now we have 0 hours of OT. None whatsoever. We went from one extreme (virtually unlimited OT) to the other extreme (0 hours OT) in less than 1 year. Of course the processing times will suffer.
With two years of pay freezes (and maybe more if the Republicans get their way), you're going to see a mass exodus from SSA in 2012, I predict. Too many employees who have topped out in grade and have no reason to stay on. This is only going to get worse if there continues to be no overtime and no hiring--but even with those, the lack of warm bodies to do the work will make the overtime meaningless.
I have 41+ years experience at the PC. The current situation is unlike any I have ever experienced. While spiking and User or Lose don't help, the real one-two punch is (as many others have said) retirements and no OT. With no raise for the foreseeable future, take-home pay will decrease year after year (health insurance increases etc.) Unless a person is eligible for a WIGI, that means that once we actually do get a raise in a couple of years, we will NEVER take home as much pay as we did in 2010...why would anyone who is eligible to retire want to keep working for LESS and LESS take-home pay, not to mention likely pension contributions increase and State tax increase (which my state did). At some point when we are allowed to hire again, it may be a measly little class of about 10 or 15 and it will take eons for the trainees to become proficient at the job. No help immediately. I have a team-leader position which means I have myriad duties in addition to casework. OT was great because it was reserved for processing the oldest cases and no one was allowed to ask questions---hours of uninterrupted time to complete very aged cases. When we had OT, we would receive lists of the very oldest cases and a due date for completion; typically where I work this list would be in single digits or maybe teens. The fewer cases there were, the lower we could go with our cut-off date. Now....a list that might have once contained maybe 8 to 20 or so cases is in the 60's and 70's. And guess which direction it is heading? We work cases in the "Swiss-cheese" method, using the little bit of time around the "holes" of answering questions, training, doing quality reviews etc. Wish I could be optimistic about the future.......
Or, as I posted in another article, maybe judges are paying fewer cases. There is a growing sentiment in Congress, and the nation as a whole, that we are paying WAY too many people disability.
In light of the WV outrage, perhaps judges are just being a little more selective.
Have CDR deferral notices been discontinued since the Thanksgiving holiday? If so, are they slated to be sent after the first of the year or just whenever time is made available (prioritized)? Does anyone know?
The allegation that allowances are decreasing is not spported at all.
New claim numbers are not decreasing. Dispatches -that is, cases worked by technicians- are decreasing.
Perhaps it is time for a dramatic shift in SSA policy and permit Field Offices to trigger the Title II payments. The systems capability already exists,but turf protection seems to always limit change significant change at SSA.
To 4:28 above: if it is indeed a "turf war", I think it's being waged above top PC management. APPEAL/HEARINGs, as the ODAR cases are designated in the PC, are a high-priority workload that take a sizable amount of CA/BA time. Unfortunately, these cases are not all straight HA MCS triggers. I'm sure the PCs would love to have the time gained by shifting processing to the FOs. Of course, those cases needing A101s would still have to be processed by the PC BA.
I work in the PC as a claims authorizer. Sometimes the F/O does trigger the ALJ allowances, to expedite processing, even though technically they are not supposed to do so. Unfortunately when they do trigger the allowances, there are inevitably errors. Often the attorney fee data on the MCS screens are not coded correctly, when the F/O triggers an award, resulting in incorrect payments to the attorney, or sometimes the entire past due benefits are released to the claimant when 25% should have been withheld for the atty.
The problem is that the C/R's don't have the time to become as technically proficient as the CA's in the PC. The CR's have to other things besides work cases and read procedure, such as interviewing claimants.
Getting back to the original question, the lack of overtime has both direct and indirect effects which are harmful to SSA.
Since overtime was cut early this year I have worked credit hours instead of overtime. I have taken off 20 full 8 hour days and many partial days, using credit hours.
As a result of having so many credit hours to use, I have not had to use my annual. I now have use or lose annual which I will be using later this month in December. I have also taken several nice vacations with the annual leave that I have saved instead of using credit hours.
So instead of being at SSA processing awards and processing attorney fee payments, on some days I am lying on a beach and swimming in the ocean.
This is a direct result of no OT resulting in my taking many more days off than I have in previous years.
Many other workers are similarly working and using credit hours, and then use or lose annual leave, due to the lack of OT. There are many more empty desks at my office due to employees being off, since OT was curtailed this year.
Wow, 6:28, I never thought of it that way..but you are right...I am worried about using up all my use or lose leave by the EOY (had today off in fact) and yesterday had to finagle time to use excess credit. The temptation if one is serious about the age and amount of one's work is to stay late to try to move one more case...but that time has to go somewhere. Never had excess credit or so much use or lose before. And 6:20--yes, especially attorney fee problems---wouldn't happen so much if they were the ones that had to fix the errors. (To those of you in the know, wish I had a dollar for every blank NOT2 MCS screen in cases where attorney rep docs are clearly present in eView and/or the development screens. How does that happen?) No aspersions, FO---I know you have your own problems.
If there's no overtime, then why not get rid of credit hours for say, December or January? You can always do that for "operational emergencies" per the union contract. Let the public and the reps complain to their Congressmen and Senators (as they rightly should) about the slowdown. Makes sense to me. We need the PUBLIC (not just the SSA management and unions and claimant reps) to get involved. Nothing else will work.
I, too, am in a similar situation as Anon 6:28: "So instead of being at SSA processing awards and processing attorney fee payments, on some days I am lying on a beach and swimming in the ocean. This is a direct result of no OT resulting in my taking many more days off than I have in previous years."
I may not have the money for a vacation on the beach, but I am certainly taking more days off this year than ever before thanks to credit hours. Although if the agency recognized this as a problem and eliminated credit hours, it would be even worse as certainly most people wouldn't put in the extra time with the pay freeze, increasing workload, etc.
Doing away with earning credit hours wouldn't help it would hurt because employees couldn't stay late and finish cases and interviews.
Remember when someone uses credit hours, they have already worked credit those hours and finished extra work. It's like the employee has worked his cases in advance.
@ the posters above 8:55...umm what?
you realize that when you use 8 hours of credit time, it means that you've already worked 8 extra hours to have earned it, right? You aren't taking more time off or spending less time working, at all...
The point about credit hours is that people who worked more than their 8 hours used to be working OT and helping the Administration and the public.
Now people who work past 8 hours are earning credit hours which must be used,which results in empty desks with people out of the office using credit hours.
SSA simply cannot afford to have so many people taking off using credit hours. The only answer is that Congress must swallow their pride and approve overtime for SSA, effective immediately.
The lack of overtime has resulted in increased pending and fewer clearances. However, that should not affect the processing of ALJ decisions as these receive top priority. I do not know why but my PC has seen a reduction in receipts from ODAR of about 25% in the last two months. We currently pay favorable decisions in an average of 15 days from receipt in the PC.
In my PC the CAs are reading the cost of living notices to the blind. We have about 3000 and 15 work days to read them. We heard that Baltimore had about 9000. This time of the year the BAs are spending more time answering the 800 number.
In PC7 the BA's read the notices to the blind not the CA's.
I too have noticed a decrease in the number of ALJ awards coming in. I wonder if there are more denials by ALJ's (these don't go to the PC, just the awards). Or maybe the ALJ's and the ALJ staff used to work OT and now OT is gone so they are clearing fewer allowances.
As an attorney rep, I have to comment on the postings of 5:11. In the last 2 months since Congress went beserk over ALJ allowances, I have seen more denials than in the entire last year--the ALJs with whom I deal have definitely been spooked.
To be honest, the problem is that the current favorable rate is way too high. We need to get it down to about 30%.
The system is so heavily slanted towards paying, it's ridiculous, mostly as a result of production requirements that substantially reward offices and judges who pay lots of claimants, including many who shouldn't, or at most should be given closed periods or 12 month reviews....
If it took WV to start the trend, this is a good thing.
"To be honest, the problem is that the current favorable rate is way too high. We need to get it down to about 30%".
Wrong! That statement sounds like an alj/examiner dictating outcomes regardless of the credible facts.
Signed,
the disabled.
What evidence produces the 30% figure? It seems arbitrary to me. I thought conservatives hated quotas.
I work in the field, and I sympathize with all of my fellow employees in the PCs. In my sixteen years with the agency, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Working conditions and morale are deteriorating rapidly. Everyone who is eligible to retire is about to bolt, and with hiring being what it is (zero), I have no idea how anyone is going to get ANYTHING done. SSA is deliberately being run into the ground.
I think the attorneys who read this blog should use their power and influence to bring these issues forth to the public. People are generally unaware that SSA needs overtime to manage our tremendous workload, and that it has abruptly been cut off, even for front line employees.
SSA cannot and must not be treated like other federal agencies who have their budgets cut for political purposes. These are real people we are dealing with and they cannot afford to wait months for their case to be heard, or for workers' compensation offset to be removed.
The public cannot afford to let these cases sit so long that administrative finality applies and we cannot fix errors in computations which result in huge overpayments.
SSA must have adequate staffing and adequate overtime to fulfill our vital mission to the public.
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