In 2012, Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) did a study on 24 of the agency's Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). Twelve had the agency's highest allowance rates for disability claims and twelve had the lowest. OIG has now gone back to look at what happened. Here's the result:
... The majority of the 24 ALJs from our first review were no longer among the ALJs with the highest and lowest allowance rates in FY 2016 because their allowance rates changed or they were no longer judges. Social Security Administration (SSA) data for FY 2016 indicatedThe report omits information that would show which group -- high allowers or low allowers -- was most affected by the focused reviews. In fact, were any low allowing ALJs selected for focused review? I'm under the impression that the agency does not regard low allowing ALJs as a problem.
Of these 24 ALJs, the Agency had conducted focused reviews on 10. Further, 7 of the 10 ALJs who had a focused review were no longer among the ALJs with the highest or lowest allowance rates or had since left the Agency....
- 6 were still among the ALJs with the highest and lowest allowance rates,
- 1 had been on administrative leave since 2014 following several reviews by the Agency,
- 1 had become a senior attorney,
- 7 were no longer among the ALJs with the highest or lowest allowance rates, and
- 9 were no longer with the Agency.
Whether intended or not, the report notes that the allowance rate for all ALJs declined from 67% in 2012 to 55% in 2016.
19 comments:
I see that one chose to become (perhaps resume) a senior attorney. That seems very odd. Curious if anyone knows the back story.
All judges should be identified by name. They don't have a problem doing it to the high granter outliers.
I am not sure... but I believe ALJ Pappenfus from the Creve Coeur Office was demoted a few years back to Senior Attorney.
Not only was she a low approver, but she was cold and often demeaning for both the claimants and Attorney/Representatives. The scary thing is that I believe she is still making decisions (Denying) OTR's and influencing ALJ decisions as a writer.
9:19 & 11:27 interesting. I had heard stories of an ALJ who was not coping well with the stress of interacting with claimants and reps and the stress of making decisions and inability to transfer to a desired location who negotiated an agreement to become a senior attorney and a transfer to a preferred office. Never knew if that was an urban legend or real event.
I don't think Pappenfus had trouble with stress and voluntarily negotiated the demotion. I think it was unilaterally offered adn encouraged.
More recently, there have been additional ALJs that have negotiated into the SAA role rather than continue on. Most of the time it has not been forced but is merely a chance for the individual to leave the demands of the ALJ position and rigid scheduling requirements for the most flexible legal job one can attain. I can see why someone that has their high three at the AL-3F level, has 15 years in for max annual leave, and is perfectly comfortable living on a 13/10 salary while being able to telework 3 days per week would drop down to have complete autonomy in their life and schedules.
With a little investigation, you can obviously find the names of the high payers and high deniers. Given the public stats and the report's identification of their offices, it's not hard to figure out.
I worked in an office w a low payer and can assure you that his/her cases were looked at during a focused review. A mountain of remands resulted from the review. Had no effect on his/her allowance rate going forward as he/she chose to retire instead of change
Giving names would be nice. The report itself says the ALJ who as placed on administrative leave has had a hearing with the Merit System Protection Board in March 2017. I did not realize until now that the MSPB provides published and unpublished opinions on their website. So, at least that ALJ's name will be public, or at least it will be once the opinion is released.
https://www.federalpay.org/employees/social-security-administration/pappenfus-jhane-m
Power of google. Papppenfus was the ALJ.
While there is not enough info to know for sure in that small sample, what does it suggest to you about susceptibility of some ALJs to respond to outside pressure to grant or deny more cases? I don't think asking ALJs will give you the answer because few would likely admit that. Seeing appreciable movement in numbers one way or another after exposure to pressure would be the best indicator, IMO.
@7:38 AALJ's response is that favorable decisions are not reviewed as often, which means rushing ALJs lead to more favorable decisions. I disagree with that reasoning, but that's their argument.
@8:00
Wow, I thought two of our judges were the worst with an 17% and 19% award rate. 12%?!?
@7:38 and 11:11-
FREVs are easier to do all around. They don't get reviewed as often because very few claimants appeal a fully favorable decision, so the amount of instruction and editing necessary is minimal. Plus, if you're doing mostly favorable decisions at a 3-1 clip, most of your hearings can be rather short as well, thus increasing the number you can do per day.
Whether pressure to pump out decisions caused the wild west days of judges cranking out 900+ decisions at a 90+% favorable rate is debatable (and my guess is the numbers have come down, in large part, due to eliminating or correcting the decisions of those judges doing this). I know of one featured in the 2014 oversight report that did so, but their reasoning had nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with trying to prove a point about what they perceived to be a broken system.
The pressure was clearly for more denials. In a classic government overreaction, poor decisions favoring some claimants at one point has led to poor decisions against other claimants now. Funny how calls for "quality" refer to "defensible" decisions and not about "right" decisions. Kind of like Comey trying to get something on Trump while ignoring actual crimes by Lynch, Clinton, etc. Selective investigating, selective emphasis of medical records, etc., all with trying to reach a desired decision instead of a search for truth!
@1:11
Ah! I thought the argument was in regard to agency-initiated reviews, not appeals from claimants.
I disagreed with the argument as agency-initiated reviews, in my experience, only have been in regard to favorable determinations and even ignoring my anecdotal evidence, I saw no reason the agency would be more likely to review unfavorable decisions than favorable decisions. But knowing now that the argument is regarding claimant appeals...yeah, that probably could encourage more awards.
@2:36
You are correct about agency reviews only being on FREVs, though that has gone away for the time being as it's all hands on deck for writing. Even then, I would agree with your thinking as maybe one out of 15-20 were ever pulled for quality review or even own-motion review by the AC (in pulling my own numbers, 5% of my FREVs were own-motion reviewed this FY).
And Tim, there has been no pressure for more denials. That's just a myth. There has been extensive public pressure not to be an ATM, which resulted in the quality reviews as a result of the Huntington scandal and subsequent Congressional oversight review. However, there are a number of judges with 60-70% favorable rates that aren't being subject to review and don't get critiqued by management.
While I agree that there has been no express pressure for increasing denials, I invite anyone interested to take a look at ALJ numbers at the disabilityjudgesdotcom site (which goes back to 2010). I often view that, and the pattern I see judge's pay rates and dispositions both going down.
An ALJ told me that favorable decisions are more difficult to write and scrutinized more frequently. Our ALJ with the highest approval rating has long and detailed hearings. That way there is plenty of evidence to justify his favorable decision. When he denies, it goes more quickly.
We have an ALJ with a 10% approval rating. I met one in Shreveport also. Won't do that again though he was nice and thanked us for allowing him the opportunity to do disability hearings (?).
"An ALJ told me that favorable decisions are more difficult to write and scrutinized more frequently."
None of that is true, unless you're awarding benefits at a clip that draws Congressional attention. I would estimate over 50% of my unfavorables or partially favorables are reviewed by the AC and DC. Less than 10% of my fully favorables are ever looked at by QR or the AC. They're so easy to do that I typically write my own the day of the hearing so that the claimant isn't waiting an extra month or two to get their benefits started.
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