Wow, dispos exceeding receipts by 90k this year already. My guess is receipts will continue to go down as the unemployment level dips below 4%. I've had 5+ hearing requests withdrawn in the last month due to returning to work with no real evidence of medical improvement. But no, the economy has next to nothing to do with the number of disability applications.
Bright side is that my reversal rate should increase as a result.
7:15 - There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The numbers look like they're trending up for FY18, but we also had a large writing backlog last year. My office had hundreds of cases that were decided but waiting to be written at the end of the fiscal year. Further, OHO has been having multiple "fully favorable writing days" where priority was given to favorable decisions. Which means at the end of the month they jack up the numbers by writing easy decisions, but the more time-consuming unfavorable decisions are still waiting to be written. Also, writers take vacations at the end of the year while judges still have to conduct the same number of hearings, so there are more cases waiting to be written come January/February. You get my point.
As to your main point, yes, making judges schedule more cases probably results in some increase in adjudications. The exact amount is hard to gauge, but I'm more troubled by the cost of making adjudicators do more with less. Something like 20 years ago, the expectation for judges was closer to 30 hearings per month. Since then, the size of the case files has grown dramatically. Even more so since the Affordable Care Act. But the agency is increasing the goals in order to make up for a lack of planning during the great recession. What short cuts does that force judges to make in order to meet those goals? Are those short cuts ethical? Do we really want a system where judges don't have the time to adequately prepare for hearings?
To give you an example, after the Huntington scandal, judges were told to spend more time on their cases in order to make sure everything was policy compliant, even if it meant conducting fewer hearings. The Appeals Council agree rate since then has skyrocketed. So by one standard, judges are doing a better job then before. But of course, the pendulum swings both ways. Now the emphasis is on more hearings, with simplified decisions to save writers time. Is that really a good trade-off? To the people in Baltimore and Falls Church, a resounding yes. To the individuals claimants that need to wait another year to appeal a poor decision, not so much.
That's weird, when I look at the stats on the CMD Portal, How MI Doing, the dispositions per ALJ per day for FY18 is 1.76 as of close of business yesterday. How does the agency come up with 2.02 in this report? Even if you take out managing judges, some of whom may be hearing fewer cases, it shouldn't account for such a wild swing.
This is off topic, but I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem with E-DIB. For some clients, when I transmit documents online, the E-DIB system lists the status as sent, but the documents never appear in the case documents list, no matter how many times I send the documents. I've called tech support, which has advised me to call OHO, and when I call OHO, they can't see the transmitted documents and thus can't help. I've been able to fax the evidence in with a barcode, and then it gets associated, but this results in double the work, and my not being able to enter the evidence description. Has anyone else encountered this problem? This has happened with 2 different clients in one month already, and it had never happened before.
I would still be completely for keeping that rigid scheduling requirement regardless, but don't you think the large number of new judges traveling through and out of their learning curve expectation cuts during that span might be a large (the largest?) part of that increase?
@5:11pm - the difference is that the 2.02 is based on "available" ALJs whereas the 1.76 is based on all on-duty ALJs. Management ALJs is one part of the difference but there are others, like the learning curve for new ALJs, extended leave, and union-related work.
10 comments:
Dispositions per day per ALJ have risen to 2.14 in April and steadily over 2.0 since January from 1.92 last year.
Gee, do you think requiring Judges to schedule 50 cases per month in order to get home time might have something to do with that?
gotta work at home twice per week when you make 175K per year + benefits
Wow, dispos exceeding receipts by 90k this year already. My guess is receipts will continue to go down as the unemployment level dips below 4%. I've had 5+ hearing requests withdrawn in the last month due to returning to work with no real evidence of medical improvement. But no, the economy has next to nothing to do with the number of disability applications.
Bright side is that my reversal rate should increase as a result.
@7:15 or the retirement of judges who were entitled to six weeks of vacation per year with more of the ALJ's now being in two or four week categories.
It's the overtime being done by writers that is increasing the ALJ disposition rate.
7:15 - There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The numbers look like they're trending up for FY18, but we also had a large writing backlog last year. My office had hundreds of cases that were decided but waiting to be written at the end of the fiscal year. Further, OHO has been having multiple "fully favorable writing days" where priority was given to favorable decisions. Which means at the end of the month they jack up the numbers by writing easy decisions, but the more time-consuming unfavorable decisions are still waiting to be written. Also, writers take vacations at the end of the year while judges still have to conduct the same number of hearings, so there are more cases waiting to be written come January/February. You get my point.
As to your main point, yes, making judges schedule more cases probably results in some increase in adjudications. The exact amount is hard to gauge, but I'm more troubled by the cost of making adjudicators do more with less. Something like 20 years ago, the expectation for judges was closer to 30 hearings per month. Since then, the size of the case files has grown dramatically. Even more so since the Affordable Care Act. But the agency is increasing the goals in order to make up for a lack of planning during the great recession. What short cuts does that force judges to make in order to meet those goals? Are those short cuts ethical? Do we really want a system where judges don't have the time to adequately prepare for hearings?
To give you an example, after the Huntington scandal, judges were told to spend more time on their cases in order to make sure everything was policy compliant, even if it meant conducting fewer hearings. The Appeals Council agree rate since then has skyrocketed. So by one standard, judges are doing a better job then before. But of course, the pendulum swings both ways. Now the emphasis is on more hearings, with simplified decisions to save writers time. Is that really a good trade-off? To the people in Baltimore and Falls Church, a resounding yes. To the individuals claimants that need to wait another year to appeal a poor decision, not so much.
That's weird, when I look at the stats on the CMD Portal, How MI Doing, the dispositions per ALJ per day for FY18 is 1.76 as of close of business yesterday. How does the agency come up with 2.02 in this report? Even if you take out managing judges, some of whom may be hearing fewer cases, it shouldn't account for such a wild swing.
This is off topic, but I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem with E-DIB. For some clients, when I transmit documents online, the E-DIB system lists the status as sent, but the documents never appear in the case documents list, no matter how many times I send the documents. I've called tech support, which has advised me to call OHO, and when I call OHO, they can't see the transmitted documents and thus can't help. I've been able to fax the evidence in with a barcode, and then it gets associated, but this results in double the work, and my not being able to enter the evidence description. Has anyone else encountered this problem? This has happened with 2 different clients in one month already, and it had never happened before.
I would still be completely for keeping that rigid scheduling requirement regardless, but don't you think the large number of new judges traveling through and out of their learning curve expectation cuts during that span might be a large (the largest?) part of that increase?
@5:11pm - the difference is that the 2.02 is based on "available" ALJs whereas the 1.76 is based on all on-duty ALJs. Management ALJs is one part of the difference but there are others, like the learning curve for new ALJs, extended leave, and union-related work.
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