Mar 8, 2012

Gotta File The Whole Appeal Online.

     From today's Federal Register:
We are clarifying the requirement that appointed representatives file certain appeals using our electronic systems in matters for which the representatives request direct fee payment. Specifically, we are clarifying that the electronic filing requirement includes both the submission of the forms we require to file the appeal request and the Disability Report--Appeal.
     Filing the appeal itself online is the easy part. Filing the Disability Report -- Appeal is the tedious, time-consuming part.
     Sending out tons of e-mail touting a webinar starting at a specific time to train people on how to file these appeals online and then not being able to handle the web traffic you generate for the webinar isn't a good way of encouraging compliance with this directive.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

how tedious can it be; most of the Dib-Report Appeal forms I see are basically blank.

Anonymous said...

1:07 Anon

Then you obviously have never filled out the Disability Report Appeal as a claimant representative. In fact, it is somewhat unclear what you would be looking at whatever you do. Medical sources, medications, representative address, claimant addresses, ADLs and more. Often this involves looking up addresses, phone numbers etc. on the net and then entering them in the SSA format. It takes a half hour to an hour depending on the clamant. Reviews of the data are built into the sequence for accuracy. Essentially, the claimant representative is completing the intake portion for the agency. In the past, it was nice for me to be able to break the task down both for the claimant's sake and for time management. I may come back in a day or two, but never took much longer. One reason is because the Field Offices would begin contacting the claimant and sending letters, they would deny if the form were not completed. Of course, Representatives will complete this now; it is part of what we do. However, it was more effective to have some time in the past. And finally, to question the fact that it is tedious and assert the info is mostly blank is simply absurd.