A federal administrative law judge signed a letter this week ruling that Adrianne Gunter’s multiple sclerosis has left her too sick to work, qualifying her for the government assistance known as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) — three months after she finally got a remote hearing via TV hookup and more than two years after she applied.
In total, it took the Social Security Administration 878 days to decide Gunter's case from the time she requested an appeal of her routine denial of benefits. ...
The Philadelphia Office of Disability Adjudication and Review has one of the worst averages for decision times in the country: 756 days. Not far behind is the South Jersey office, with a 736-day average decision time as of Feb. 23, according to the latest SSA data. ...
Since January, Social Security has added eight judges to the two Philadelphia-area offices, for a total of 23 administrative law judges. Four area congressmen also wrote to Nancy Berryhill, acting commissioner of the agency, asking her to address the sometimes years-long delays for residents seeking hearings.
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, whose district includes parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County, met with Berryhill last week and said that the administration started a prehearing conference pilot program in Philadelphia in an attempt to alleviate the backlog. According to Boyle, Berryhill said a big reason for the pileup is that appellants often don’t learn they have a right to an attorney until their scheduled hearing. The prehearing meeting is designed to happen months before the hearing, giving them time to find a lawyer. ...
Should not take three months after the hearing to issue an FF decision. That speaks to a problem with decision writers in Region 3. A bench decision could have shaved off some of the three months.
ReplyDeleteOr the claimant's lawyer was unprepared and the case had to marinate in post-hearing development for some of those three months ....
Don't hang this on the ALJs.
to 10:25
ReplyDeleteDecisions routinely take three months or more. No Judge in South Jersey issues Bench Decisions. I have seen cases sit in the list as first Post Hearing Review (meaning all records are in and sitting on Judge desk) to Decision Writing Process (meaning the Judge issued their instructions and sent it to be written) then Decision writing Process (meaning some decision writer has been assigned the case and it is being written or having been written is back to the Judge to sign) for the entire three months.
So, please tell me where in that process it becomes the attorney's fault and not either the Judge or the decision writing process or 70,000 backlogged decisions to be written that is the problem?
And, by the way, as a Staff Attorney for 10 years, I wrote nearly 5,000 decisions of which about half were favorable and half not in the pre-word processor IBM MagCard days and very few ever took 30 days to write. Maybe the short form fully favorable is ready to make a comeback. do we really need 15 page fully favorable decision, let alone 25 page denial monstrosities that are little more than long blocks of boiler plate followed by long summaries of the evidence followed by summary conclusions absent any meaningful rationale.
Look at the numbers. The per Judge per day dropped from 2.4 to 1.7, recently unticking to 1.9. The only difference I can see is that Judges were told that their days at home were dependent on scheduling more cases. Yeah, blame the lawyers.
9:58, file size has quintupled in recent years, from 200 page average to 1000 page average in some regions, but ALJ scheduling expectations have remained static. That helps explains the drop in ALJ productivity (that, and the 22% drop in support staff revealed by that OIG report, matching the 22% drop in ALJ productivity).
ReplyDeleteOf the anecdotal tales you give above, you seem to forget the difference between ALPO (record is complete but judge needs time to write instructions) and POST (all records are NOT in). Most ALJs are trained to write instructions right after the hearing if the record is truly complete.