From the Chattanooga Times Free Press:
A longstanding backlog in the processing of disability benefits applications from people who are too sick to work has surpassed 1.1 million people nationally — a 27% increase from pre-pandemic levels two years ago and a level not seen in more than a decade.
In Tennessee, the number of people waiting to see if their disability benefits have been approved has increased by 40% ...
Attorneys in Tennessee say the long wait has imposed "significant hardships" on many of their clients, including losing homes, jobs and access to health care benefits received through employers. In extreme instances, attorneys described clients who have died — from illness and suicide — while waiting. ...
[Peter] Harris, who also serves as general counsel for the federal employee union that represents Social Security employees across the country, said the Social Security Administration and state disability determination departments have compounded the difficulties faced during the pandemic.
"Management has made things 20 times worse, and applicants have been left out in the cold," he said. "Employees [who process disability applications] are pushed in this environment to hurry things up." ...
6 comments:
I can't even begin to express how true this is. The offices are so exponentially behind, and leadership's method is to just keep throwing more and more at the analysts. We have to pick up the slack for analysts who have quit or been fired, and while trainees are being hired, they are fired or quit within months. It takes 2 years to fully learn to be a disability analyst, but leadership doesn't seem interesting in keeping the seasoned analysts that are already doing the job. People are fed up, but no higher ups seem to care. All they want is to get the cases out, but unfortunately, they don't seem to realize that much of the time, they're the ones causing the problems.
Claimants are going to continue to be waiting to hear about their decisions, unless something major changes. Claims are held up at the local offices, then again at DDS. My coworkers and I are stressed to breaking, and it's causing many of them to leave. And, since no one is available to take their place, so it just adds more work to the remaining analysts. And honestly, we can't keep up with what we have.
DDS is in serious trouble, with no solution or end in sight.
Salaries at DDS are pathetic. That does not help employee retention which does not help overall productivity.
Also very true in New York . FO's send claims timely and they are not receipted by DDS timely. It takes months for a DDSQ to be established , which I think translates into a delay in assigning to an Examiner.
I echo 5:29… as a DDS worker of almost 15 years, I have never seen it so bad. Examiners are quitting at a rapid rate and no one is applying to replace them at $32,000/year in this job market… only to be yelled at by claimants and learn a complicated new system in an already complicated program governed by both state and federal governments that each have their own set of problems. The only people at the FOs these days seem to be brand new employees who have no idea what they are doing and don’t do any development on claims. It’s an absolute train wreck. Pretty soon there will be no one left to process disability claims.
11:02 R U Kidding 32K... SSA hiring galore echoing your statement about "brand new employees " which is correct as I have 5 trainees in the FO to mentor. I am not sure what you mean by not doing any development ? .. There is pressure to complete Disability claims daily. There is no way to complete the assigned number often as many as 7 or 8 for an interviewer. The FO can only load what medical sources the claimants provide. I insist that trainees make the effort to find medical sources in the Source Reference File which I was under the impression made DDS's job easier . ....GS-7's start at 52 K and GS 9's @ 63 K.
Claims Specialists start at a GS 5
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