Social Security has sent out instructions for something called the Electronic Informal Remand Special Project 2012. This is an effort to select particularly strong disability cases in which a request for hearing has been filed and divert them to a special review by someone other than an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) to see if it is possible to pay them quickly. It sounds a lot like informal remand projects of the past. and present. It is not clear to me whether there is anything really new about this. This may be old wine in new bottles.
The major problems with this sort of thing has been lack of personnel to do the reviews and, recently, a reluctance to approve anything other than the most gold-plated cases. We will see how this new process works.
3 comments:
Beside a history of few cases being paid on this 'second recon', the best potentional DDS review cass are where there is new medical evidence rather than a hope of something being found by further DDS developement.
A large problem is the conflicting goal of wanting a quick DDS turnaround time and the time it takes to get more medical evidence.
Also, tends to duplicate the existing Senior Attorney review program and diverts cases that are alread on the edge of being paid OTR at the hearing level.
There are surplus DDS resources sitting idle for this added program?
Re-recon strikes again. . . .
Another aspect of the "process" that such projects overllok is the fact that district offcie employess doehave the option to refer such cases back to the state agency for re-opening. The POMS procedures are clear and simple, but under utilized.
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