From the conclusions of Comparing the Social Security Administration’s Disability Determination Services’ Workload Statistics During the COVID-19 Pandemic to Prior Years, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
Although the DDSs [Disability Determination Services] experienced some increases/decreases in their workload categories from year to year for the period April 2016 through March 2021, the largest year-to-year changes occurred from the COVID-19 period of April 2020 to March 2021 compared to the prior-year period (April 2019 to March 2020). DDSs received 15.9 percent fewer initial claims during the COVID-19 period compared to the prior-year period. Additionally, SSA sent 40.2 percent fewer CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews] to the DDS during the COVID-19 period compared to the prior-year period.
Despite the decrease in initial claims, DDS processing times increased during the COVID-19 period, which indicates claimants waited longer for DDSs to make medical determinations. Furthermore, even though receipts decreased for initial claims, reconsiderations, and CDRs, the pending workloads for these groups increased—which indicates the DDSs could not keep pace with workloads received.
Finally, we noted that DDSs significantly decreased the use of consultative examinations; however, allowance/continuance rates remained relatively the same when comparing the COVID-19 period to the prior-year period. ...
19 comments:
Charles, I have noticed that you make one post a week with the clear intent of evoking the "reopen the offices!!!!" battle cry. I see that this is this week's edition.
We keep hearing that wfh has no impact on people but then we see numbers like 15.9% fewer filings.
Now I know we are going to hear screams about stimulus money this and that. How long do you think $1200 lasts? Enhanced UE is gone too, and how long do you think $300 lasts?
Entitlement just isnt on the claimant side these days it is all on the agency side as well.
More often than not, consultative exams are a waste of time and money. We call them drive bys. DDS rarely sends the records to these alleged doctors so they are not aware of important information in the record and the MSE's are a joke.
Yeah, I've never seen anything like this in my 25+ years of practice. When covid hit, the hearing offices cleaned out all the hearing files on our shelves since we immediately agreed to phone hearings. This is then coupled with the fact that initial claims are taking so much longer now to process. It's not unusual to see initial decisions take 12 months or longer and recon decisions 6 months or longer. This means that our hearing attorneys are sitting around with little to do. Our hearing counts are way down while the initial app and recon cases crawl thru the process. Our new client acquisition over the last 2 years have been the highest we've recorded, but revenue is down with fewer hearings.
We're hoping the dam will break and all these initial claims will finally begin to make it to the hearing level later this year. What's causing the delay at DDS? Work from home not as productive? Mass retirements depleting the work force?
There are a number of factors at play here. Telework was suddenly thrust upon SSA employees in March 2020, it took some time for SSA employees to become efficient at it and for the necessary infrastructure to be developed. More recent stats than 2020 would be a better measure.
Also there have been severe cuts in overtime throughout SSA since early 2020. This has obviously had a negative effect on processing times.
Anecdotally, phone service and processing times have gotten worse in late 2021 compared to earlier this year. I have Recon cases that were filed almost 2 months ago that are still not assigned to analyst at DDS. Any efficiency improvements seem to be undermined by staffing shortages. And the new hires are functionally useless without a better training program.
This is like a broken record. It is all about not having the necessary amount of staff at the SSA levels and OHOs. When will Congress fund this place right?
So same number of people but fewer claims and further behind, so we need more people. That makes sense.
@11:59
Is your training comment in reference to DDS employees or SSA employees.
I’m curious how SSA is training people while they are at home. I’m sure that is some of the issue too, if there have been 1,000 new field hires this year that has to slow things down. How is that process going?
No, DDS staffing levels are way down.
2:31 You must have missed the post about drastic cuts in overtime.
The resulting dramatic decrease in total hours worked by SSA employees should be considered.
Delays at DDS relate to the inability to get CEs ...we were not allowed to get them for much of the period... Inability to get school records because schools not open ,
. And people not even being able to get to see their own doctors for evaluation. Yes CEs are not often the best... However they result probably in as many goofy allowances as denials...especially the psych ones
This ^ 100%. CEs were cemetery shut down for several months and created massive backlogs. Many vendors in my state simply didn't return afterwards or are seeing a fraction of the claimants they once were due to Covid sanitary requirements. Add in that many states were forced to switch over to a new processing system remotely in DCPS that still isn't fully functional. Couple those issues with extreme attrition and a terrible hiring pool and you have a perfect storm for delays. It will be years before DDSs sig out of this hole, and that's only if they're granted unprecedented hiring authority.
anon@3:04pm,
SSA employee training these days consists of watching numerous series of VOD (video on demand) training sessions. They are so boring that it is a wonder that the new hires don't hang themselves from the nearest elevated surface to escape.
Since the agency doesn't even bother to give them training manuals any more, they can do this so called "training" at home.
Wow. It’s that bad? Do new hires struggle with it or are they leaving the agency because of it? All I ever hear about is understaffing.
@1010 New hires do struggle with the "training" they receive. And some that have been hired have quit before they finished training. A nearby office had a couple of people quit last year before their first day of work.
The training is a joke. We’ve lost one new hire already and we have another threatening to quit. SSA is in a really bad place right now with hiring and retaining staff.
I see I’m not the only one with training issues in my office. Has anyone with any pull spoken up about this? Like at the AD or RO level?
Charles, I’ve seen a lot of posts on here about the training issues at SSA. Can you open a post to see how big of a problem this is and if it’s slowing down work?
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