From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
Objective
To determine the effectiveness of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) controls for resolving high-priority requests sent via the modernized development worksheet (MDW) process.
Background
Because SSA’s processing centers (PC), teleservice centers, and field offices have different processing roles and systems access, SSA employees are often required to contact other offices to request case processing assistance. Employees use MDWs, manually designated as either routine or high priority, to send requests for action to other field offices or PCs. Per SSA policy, high-priority MDW requests should be limited to situations that involve awards and disallowance of claims; start- and stop- payment actions; appeals; congressional inquiries; and public-relations issues. According to SSA’s policy, employees should follow up on unresolved high-priority requests after 20 calendar days.
From SSA’s Processing Center Action Control System, we identified 121,376 benefit records with high- priority MDWs pending at PCs as of January 28, 2020. Of these, 82,439 (68 percent) had MDWs that were pending for at least 60 days. We reviewed a random sample of 100 benefit records with high-priority MDWs pending at least 60 days.
Findings
SSA does not have effective controls for resolving high-priority requests sent via the MDW process. As a result, SSA made improper or delayed payments and inflated PC backlogs, which impeded efforts to improve customer service. For 51 of the 100 sampled benefit records, SSA did not resolve the high-priority MDWs or resolved them longer than 60 days after field office and teleservice center employees sent them to the PCs. ...
For the remaining 49 benefit records, employees (1) resolved the high-priority MDWs but did not clear them or (2) made incorrect inputs on MDW requests. We estimate SSA’s management information was inflated by over 40,000 high-priority MDWs, which further decreased the effectiveness of the MDW process. ...
So much to unpack here. Note that the systems used by the payment centers, teleservice centers and field offices don't really talk with each other very well so Social Security had to come up with the MDW process but that's not really working so well. It sounds like the system has almost completely broken down if it ever worked to begin with. Even when the MDWs are "resolved", often there are errors in the "resolution." And, oh yes, note the special treatment for "public relations issues."
This isn't a video game. Real people suffer lengthy delays in the payment of benefits owed them. Many of these problems never get resolved without frequent external pressure from attorneys representing claimants.
24 comments:
ssa needs to hire staff like crazy..
That is the only real solution.
Ironic that the "researchers" from your last post point to intentional appeal delays by attorneys as the primary source for increased approval wait times.
Our office has spend countless hours in the last year dealing with this broken system. I have some approval cases processed within 2 weeks of approval, yet a hearing case approved back in May is still waiting for payment. We have called the national payment center half a dozen times, and they never provided a clear answer as to why the claim was not processed. Called again yesterday, and were told that it was OHO that failed to process and send case over until August. In the 4-5 prior calls, no phone tech advised us that OHO was the reason for delay--otherwise we would have followed up directly with OHO instead of wasting our time with the wrong office.
In another case, we have been repeatedly promised by multiple payment center technicians, that our clients remaining past due benefits would be released within 4-5 business days--still not released 2 months later, and we do not know what to tell our client.
T2 CTE at an FO here… unfortunately the PC has far too many responsibilities to handle right now. I don’t think unlimited overtime is the answer either. They need more staff and/or the ability to offload some inputs to the FO. Why can’t we have a specialist position in the FO to actually process these dire need situations?
PC7 doesn't have the staff to expedite the processing of MDW's we received. They go into the backlog like any other post entitlement issue, and sit there for months. While this is not efficient, there is an old saying here: If every case is a priority case, then no case is a priority case.
The only cases that really get pushed to the front of the line are congressional inquiries and manager to manager requests.
The PC's are a complete joke. However, the bottom line is SSA has more work than it has workers to handle it in a efficient manner. This is the result.
Apparently they are unable to hire systems designers with any skill. The ones they have do not seem up to the task.
PC2 and PC3 are either not doing anything at all or doing what they do incorrectly. And it's impossible to reach them.
Mr 10:23 .. T16 CTE here .. r u serious .. we deal w/ the public on the telephone in the Covid environment .. nearly 500 calls a day ... and w/ some limited Expedited Interviews .. and you want the PSC's to send us their work !!! Agreed it is the Public Stuck in the middle. Lingering MDW"S can be resolved by Manager to Manager intervention. Bottom line is there are not enough horses to pull the train . We have had 5 new hires in the past year and just 5 more in the past 2 weeks. Competency takes time !
I assume you meant the first post @ 10:23 -
I was the second post at 10:23. I’m a generalist CS in a inner city office.
We have exactly 2 CS’s right now…2!!!
We have 4 total workers with any experience at all and 5 trainees!!!
I feel your pain… we are getting buried deeper and deeper on a daily basis. Literally 2 people to answer phones, take 15-20 appts a day and oh yeah, process the mound of paperwork sent to the office daily.
I’m so far behind I don’t even know where to start. Most days, even if I knew what to start with, I couldn’t find the time to do it anyway.
Today we answered 72% of our calls. That’s a minor miracle but it came at the cost of doing nothing else for the day.
I’m thankful to have a job but this is unsustainable. The hires may be able to help in a year or so unless they quit under the stress of being pushed to go faster and faster before they even have a grasp of the job.
4:25 this is 10:23 … Allow me to explain the my idea since you’re T16. Permitting the FO to do the MACADE inputs would help alleviate some of the public relations issues at PC. We’re already the ones spending the time talking to the beneficiary so why not allow us to do the reinstatement or benefit adjustment right then and there? Why send a request to a BA who already has 50 million items on their ACR. It’s like you have a NON-MSSICS case and you’re kicking the can to someone else when you can just do the damn 1719 or 450 yourself. As a generalist I always appreciated the way we can resolve SSI issues directly for the client. I just wish we had the same abilities from the T2 side.
@6:54 PM
BAs in DOs were discussed and shout down a while ago because of concerns that political clout wanted to keep the most federal jobs in their area (e.g. PSCs).
In reality, it would not take much for the typical high priority items to be manually processed at DOs: disability cessations, benefit continuation, payee changes that kick out, bank changes, death terminations, etc. It would be a telephone unit for each area in a region.
Sadly, a solution so simple might never see that light of day because of politics, as usual. The technicians could even be a virtual detail to keep the training centralized if that were a sticking point.
I would be against the FO making MACADE inputs.
Many years ago the FO was given the authority to input workers' compensation offset adjustments. But WC offset is usually done incorrectly when the FO inputs it. They just don't have the training or the expertise that the PSC technicians have.
Also the FO isn't supposed to input ALJ allowance awards but sometimes they do and there are inevitably mistakes made.
From the findings "SSA does not have effective controls..." Ah yeah how about replace the word controls with EMPLOYEES or STAFFING. We don't need another list, or more supervisors, to tell us we have a million backlogged MDWs. We need employees, live bodies to do the work. Allowing FOs to do some of the PC manual inputs is a good idea too, won't be able to be utilized in the most overstretched FOs, but still useful. As a T2 leaning TE I spend whole days dodging claimant complaints, sending follow ups to PCs that I know won't be worked on and fixing mistakes made by my undertrained CR coworkers. This agency is so dysfunctional it is amazing we get anything done.
500 calls divided by 8 hours equals 62.5 calls an hour.
Hey, whatever happened to those folks hired with OHO's specially-earmarked backlog extra money and ostensibly "OHO employees" (LOL) who worked in a couple PSCs and were actually Operations employees doing Operations work (I believe it was a PSC in the northeast/eastern seaboard and maybe another one or two PSCs where these folks were housed)? Whatever happened to those folks?
7:54 -- Yes 500 calls an average -- we don't get them all but we average an answer rate of 85-90 % ... we have to have at least 8 people on the GI line all the time .. mgmt usually schedules about 50 interviews on VIP.. to their credit the O/S/s kick in from time to time ... unfortunately we have CTE's on the GI line most of time and they can analyze the issue quickly and keep call duration to a minimum ... but you will agree that is waste of CTE skills,
As a T2 CR, I don't mind helping on phone calls I can help but the vast majority are SSI issues (I understand SSI a bit but I don't know how to do much more than change address/phone number safely) or SR issues (I have done a handful of non receipts since SSA stopped using that 5 x 8 inch card) that like SSI, I can actually help with a few things but much less efficiently than SRs. Title II claim issues seem to be few and far between.
Re 500 calls--phone lines are open 9-4 so that would be 7 hours or 71+ per hour.
Re MDWs to PC--they drop off the MDW system and while PC may be working them eventually, they may also have determined nothing had to be done and you'd be hard pressed to find that out.
As far as I know nobody in the PSC pays attention to whether a MDW is classified as "high priority" they all go into the backlog.
The problem is that some FO send almost everything including MDWs to the PSC as "high priority" or "dire need" as they think it will be worked faster and that will get the claimant off their back.
However when you talk to the FO you realize it doesn't really meet dire need criteria.
One of the problems for FOs is that they have a situation that definitely is dire need but it may not meet the definition of dire need. Money matters can frequently be addressed through CPS but Medicare entitlement or re entitlement can't be done in the local office if the record is already screwed up. So maybe the person doesn't quite meet the definition of dire need but their Medicare was terminated and they need a life-saving operation. The manual may say it's not dire need but for that person it's very dire.
Real Businesses that only answer 85 - 90% of their calls (where there is no way to leave a message and received a call back) do not stay in business.
The problem is two-fold. First, there is not enough staff to do the work and answer calls. That is a management failure that cannot be attributed to staff.
And there are system designs problems where information cannot be accessed or passed automatically allowing for quick dispositions. There are many examples but consider just one, "windfall offset" when a person is approved for both SSI and SSD benefits relies on multiple inputs by different people and complex calculations that do not have to be that complicated if the system was properly programmed.
Again, that is also a management problem. Poor staffing and poor systems equals poor results, all to be laid at long term management's feet, not just the political level that didn't care anyway.
And now we have an acting Commissioner with absolutely no management experience that is laser focused on "equity" which, to be sure is a worthy goal but looks more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
And an Agency where I used to work that once prided itself on real customer service is swirling right down the toilet.
Former 800# CSR; current FO CS. From both angles the issue is the PC backlog, which generates 800# calls and FO GI - with the latter preventing the FO CS from doing their job. Eliminate the PC backlog and calls to both channels crater. (Even properly staffing the 800# would reduce pressure on the GI line).
MDWs (if you want a real laugh, the M stands for Modernized) are a firewall put up for the PC's benefit. They are there so that the FO and TSC do not have direct access to PC employees. The backlog on them is so terrible that I can't remember the last time an issue was resolved without taking over a month and requiring a manager-to-manager.
In the FO, we basically see an MDW as pitching a claimant's issue into a black hole. If SSA leadership would at least put a BA and CA in each level 1 FO, some of the more drastic and tragic customer service issues could get resolved more immediately. But they don't want that. Instead, it's up to the FO employees to face the angry, hurt, upset claimants and give them vague timelines on when their issue might be pulled from the giant mound and actually worked.
Actually you havent faced them in over a year, just the phone.
@2:02PM
I volunteered for return to the office as soon as it was allowed. I conduct face to face interviews five days a week, jackass.
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