I was unable to watch today's hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee because I'm a practicing attorney with clients to represent. Here are some excerpts from the written remarks of Patrick O'Carroll, Jr. Social Security's Inspector General, listing some ongoing reviews:
- Trends Associated with Cases Decided by High-Denial Outlier ALJs , in which we are analyzing subsequent actions on high-denial ALJ decisions, as well as subsequent actions on denials made by other ALJs in the high-denial ALJ’s hearing office.
- Quality Review of On-the-Record Decisions: OTR decisions — where no hearing was necessary because the documentary evidence alone supported a fully favorable decision —
- accounted for about 1 of every 5 allowances in FY2012. We will assess the reasons OTR cases were decided upon receipt at the hearing office but not approved earlier at the DDS level.
- Relationships Between Medical Providers and Represented Claimants: We will look at trends in medical source in formation provided by claimants and their representatives at the hearing level to identify any question able relationships that may merit additional Agency attention.
Also, I have seen tweets from a reporter who watched the hearing indicating that there was testimony that the rate of people being approved for Social Security disability is at a 40 year low and that Social Security has a target date of 2016 for a new occupational information system. Of course, target dates aren't always met.
10 comments:
Indeed...they kinda never meet their target dates. That being said, I think damn near everyone agrees that this whole DOT-based situation is ridiculous. Our office is getting an increasing number of written objections to VE testimony, largely based on the DOT's outdated information, and while I'm just a decision writer, I find their arguments persuasive. I gather that some of the judges do, too, as they're sticking with step 4 denials when possible, rather than invoking the DOT-based "other jobs" that a step 5 or alt-step 5 decision would require.
That being said, I'm glad they're actually realizing that WAY too many clearly disabled folks are being punted by DDS just to be approved OTR at the hearing level. Granted, those decisions make my life easier, but I'm reasonable enough to admit that I shouldn't even see those cases. I'm particularly surprised by how many of those folks actually meet a listing, yet DDS, for example, thought they could perform medium work. I've even had a couple of 12.05 OTR cases; in both, DDS simply ignored the IQ scores. No mention at all. Absurd. I hope they *actually* dig into this stuff, rather than just creating some new documents and such to suggest the appearance of progress and quality control.
I guarantee you that the Republicans in charge of this committee think that ODAR is paying WAY to many people that the diligent folks at the DDS have rightfully denied.
So, rate of approval is at a 40 year low? Good to see that there is some corroboration of the trends that we're seeing in our practice. We've seen about a 10-15% drop in approval rates in the last 5 years. The only explanation I can see is that the newer ALJs coming in are, as a rule, much more conservative. With the absence of attorney advisor decisions along with the decreased backlogs, the practice is much tougher now.
The new ALJs are not really more conservative. What has made a difference is many of the extremely high producers/high payers have been reined in. You no longer have people like Daugherty issued 800, 900, 1000 decisions a year and paying almost everyone. Eliminating 100s of false pays makes a big difference. [Of course, there are still many erroneous favorables, as the ongoing investigation in Puerto Rico demonstrates].
Poor me, even though my clients have already had their files reviewed twice and been denied twice and even though often little has changed in my client's condition between the reconsideration determination and the ALJ hearing, those mean ALJs aren't paying enough of my clients.
I disagree, 11:51. Although I've never had a hearing with ALJ Daugherty, I have local ALJs that are liberal and pay much more than they deny. These ALJs haven't changed their stripes. Instead, it's the new ALJs that replace the ones who eventually retire that all seem to be conservative.
By the way, not all awards from high producers are "false pays..."
I think it bears mentioning that there is some "black robe syndrome" going on with many of the newer judges (hired in the last three years, say). In our office, at least, that's a definite factor--I have newfound authority, it's awesome, and I'm gonna wield it. A couple of our newer judges have calmed down and fallen into a consistent pattern of fairly average ratios of paid vs. unpaid cases. One has a very high approval rate. But a couple of them wear their lower approval rates as a badge of honor--two judges in particular. One is a political conservative, the other a political liberal. While it's easy to see conservative-vs-liberal aspects to disability law, the judges don't always break that way. Put differently, an a-hole who doesn't wanna pay folks is an a-hole who doesn't wanna pay folks, regardless of personal politics. The *person* is the primary driver; their politics are secondary.
I agree that not every case a high producer pays is a "false pay" (especially since there used to be a couple of high producers with high denial rates), but a judge who pays 80, 85, 90, 95% of his/her cases is abusing the rules and paying a fair percentage of people who are not disabled.
You realize that many of the "pays" are for people who are not really disabled in any meaningful sense of the word, but rather are "older" and viewed less favorably as new hires.
A person who is 55 and capable of light work is not disabled, but we pretend he is disabled because people who are 55 have a harder time finding a new job than a person who is 25.
Instead of taking "older" individuals who are perfectly capable of working out of the workforce and attaching the "disabled" label on them, we, as a society, out to be providing greater vocational assistance to older displaced workers and out to better value the experience and knowledge such workers can bring to a business.
Totally agree w/ Anon 10:54 about the black robe syndrome.
Out here in Southern California, I see this all the time. Most new ALJs want "to appear to be" a judge and not actually "be a judge." Almost all new judges seem competent but grant far less than most older ALJs. However, there are a few who are clueless (e.g. one of the ALJs had never heard of the listings).
My hunch is they were somehow trained differently out there in Virginia. I am not going to say they were told to deny cases. But my hunch is the outgoing Astrue had some input in making sure ALJs really think about it before granting a claim. Just a theory. Hard to prove.
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