From the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB):
On Thursday afternoon, July 29, from 12:45 to 4 pm EDT, the Board will bring together state Disability Determination Services managers and staff, a claimant attorney, and former Social Security executives for a roundtable on the agency’s medical evidence collection.
The roundtable will cover an introduction to the evidence collection process and state approaches to collecting evidence.
Participants:
- Bob Emrich, Senior Technical Consultant SSA Portfolio, Peraton; former Director, Federal DDS, SSA (retired)
- Marjorie Garcia, President, National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE); Disability Analyst, Oregon DDS
- Paul Kreger, Medical Professional Relations Officer, Iowa DDS
- Jennifer Nottingham, Legislative Director, NADE; Operations Manager, Nevada DDS
- Marjorie Portnoy, Managing Partner, Portnoy Disability Practice in Radnor, Pennsylvania
- Teresa Sizemore-Hernandez, Professional Relations Team Leader, Virginia DDS
- Melissa Spencer, former Deputy Associate Commissioner, Office of Disability Policy, SSA (retired)
- Sara Winn, Immediate Past President, NADE; Program Specialist, Louisiana DDS
Someone please tell them that HITMER is not working. No one is really looking at docs with over 300 pages or files with 5k pages that are not broken up properly.
ReplyDeleteHITMER works fine. Someone please tell them to train DDS personnel to quit HITMER’ing the same time period 3+ times in the same file for initial and recon levels. It is the easiest thing in the world to avoid.
ReplyDeleteHITMER is fine. The first third are progress notes and hospital visits in reverse chronological order. The second third are lab results, most of which are already cited in the notes. The back third is lined out duplicates. Easy to read and no handwriting to decipher.
ReplyDeleteHITMER does not work when you have one document (non VA) with more than 500 pages. It is not a rare occurrence.
ReplyDeleteOne document of 500 pages is the same as 10 documents with 50 pages. The advantage of HITMER is the organization, the readability, and the ability to easily search the text. It’s also substantially cheaper and faster than traditional records requests are for reps and claimants. Once you get familiar with each provider’s format (they’re not all exactly like 10:10’s description though most are), they’re incredibly easy to navigate.
ReplyDelete