It's been my impression over the years that Social Security always practices "fast tracking" to some extent. By "fast tracking" I'm talking about processing the simplest things first, the ones that take little time, in order to generate good production numbers.
"Fast tracking" seems to be out of hand now. Why is Social Security processing retirement claims almost immediately while taking six months to do windfall offsets? I'm seeing workloads of more complex matters at the field offices and payment centers that have been put off and put off in the apparent hope that there will be time later to work on them. Many of these delayed cases became complicated because someone at
Social Security made a mistake that needs to be corrected. These delayed cases are now at crisis levels. I don't see a surge of overtime to take care of these cases anytime in the next two years.
Isn't it time to say "stop!" Delay the routine processing of easy cases a bit. Take care of the horrible backlogs of more complicated matters and then get back to the routine cases. If a retirement claimant has to wait an extra month for first payment of benefits, so what? Why should that retirement claimant have his or her case processed quickly just because it's easy? You can't keep putting off windfall offsets and other complicated matters forever. Sooner or later the field offices and payment centers will have to take care of them. Quit worrying about the stats and take care of the claimants who have waited the longest. It's the fair thing to do.
Things are constantly being “fast tracked” because the agency maintains impossible production quotas, which are never adjusted downward to accommodate increased file sizes or case complexity, and instead just keep getting ratcheted upward as the work gets more difficult to complete.
ReplyDeleteThis is apparently what the people think they want, though, as they keep electing Congresspersons who give the agency less funding year after year while demanding the agency get more done with less staff year after year. And, sadly, the invertebrates in Woodlawn are all too happy to lick these same Congressmen’s boots while crushing the agency’s hardworking field staff under their own boots.
You are so funny.
ReplyDeleteBet you would want your damn retirement to start on time and not be delayed because they had to do some ancient last century machine coding on a offset case, which, contrary to the feelings of this blog is not every other claim ever filed.
I can make it all go a bunch easier. Get rid of payment in any kind or form to representatives for disability benefits. This would lower filings, get rid of useless claims in the system and make everything move faster.
ReplyDelete@10:01
ReplyDeleteI had presumed they did that years ago.
Ssa offices should change the way business is done. Monday= file for retirement and survivors benefits. Tuesday is only for ssi. Wednesday/ Thursday is disability and Friday is for social security cards / Medicare etc.
ReplyDeleteYou are confused about what you are discussing. Title 2 reps process retirement claims and Title 16 reps process windfall offsets. Retirement claims take about 20 seconds to process. Why should T2 reps delay processing their workloads because of backlogged workloads in SSI?
ReplyDelete20 seconds to process a retirement claim? I processed those for over 20 years and never completed one that quickly.
DeleteFair and the SSA are not synonymous. Wish it was.
ReplyDeleteAll the experienced staff who knew how to do offsets and the like are gone now. So what can be done ?
ReplyDeleteOh 12:39 you forget where you are at, this is a disability blog, they actually think that is the only thing a TII ever does! They honestly believe we just sit there and cant wait to make the 13th change of rep on a claim! By the way it is just a recon! That will change 22 more times when a hearing is set. They will file an Aux claim with the initial, not knowing there is absolutely NOTHING to connect the aux claim too, but by golly there is a check there and they dont want to miss it.
ReplyDeleteIf any rep sat for three days with a TII in the office, they would never ever complain again.
Im overwhelmed, that’s why Charles.
ReplyDeleteI can do a RIB in about 15-20 minutes. The windfalls that are being pushed to the back are the more complicated ones and we don’t have the staff to do them correctly.
20 minutes to do a complicated offset…no chance. Im lucky to squeeze in my lunch most days.
at 1:21: I don't know what office you purport to work at but I've been specializing in SSA disability law for over 10 years. I'd say less than 5% of our cases had another rep involved at any time in the case before we got involved (and yes, we take cases at all levels). I can count on one hand how many had more than one before it came to our office. Exaggerate much? Side note: I have to almost laugh at the comments from time to time about this being a "disability blog" etc and that is all we care about. From my understanding, this blog run by a DISABILITY atty's office. What sort of comments were you expecting to see on here?
ReplyDeleteSince this a DISABILITY blog, don’t tell us how to work RSI claims. I think a elderly widow filing for survivors benefits because her husband just died and she lost more than half her income should not be brushed aside to process your clients claim.
DeleteI take exception to citing windfall offsets as a problem. I have been working them in an FO for decades and seldom let them linger over 14 days, even the complex ones which can cover > 15 years, The problem is in the PSC's. Please don't lump a;; SSAers together. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteEffective leadership would find a way. Starting with getting Congress to understand they need to tweek the laws that make administration counterproductive. That won't be easy, but it could be done. Or, just don't enforce those tules with policy change. Tell Congress you can't follow their laws unless you get more funding. Do you really need to calculate SSI work offsets and worry how much money they have in the bank? Why worry about overpayments? That's Congress's problem.
ReplyDeleteAs with a lot of things, a suggestion for a simple fix is never that simple of a fix.
ReplyDeleteFor years now, those in the trenches have been screaming that more trained manpower is a large part of the solution to the current problems. They’ve been ignored to the point of where we are now— too few workers and a significant loss in institutional knowledge.
Shuffling around workloads of the people who are left isn’t a fix. It’s just putting more weight on the people weighed down already. Particularly if you’re asking those people to work on a complicated issue that they may not have been trained on recently, if at all.
What irks me most is no one is going to address the real causes of the mess. But, they will use the mess to push the narrative that government workers are lazy, and SSA is so broken, it should be privatized. I don’t think this was the intent of this post, but the suggestion—if workers just focused on this hard workload (windfalls) over easy workloads (RIB), it would fix it— does feed that narrative.
I try to practice harm reduction. I know I have about 16 hours of work to get through in a normal 10 hour day. (I don't even bother thinking of my work as 8 hours.) I prioritize things that immediately affects people's payments or insurance immediately- reinstatements, keeping entitlements going, appeals with payment continuation.
ReplyDeleteManagement tends to prioritize the things that are easily tracked and kept track of by Regional Office; things like CDRs, work reviews, processing cutoffs, etc.
I have to balance the two, and usually the things that end up being backburnered are things that won't immediately affect someone's check and aren't a high management priority. Like if they have a waiver request in for an overpayment; we've suspended debt reclamation until I make a decision, so it's no rush. Or if their retirement benefit isn't going to start until three months down the road, and I need proofs from them. Or missing earnings that have been submitted for someone.
Since it's apparently a de facto requirement around here to gripe in the comment section at Charles with something about disability lawyers, I will say that sending back a confirmation to attorneys that I received their 1695, or fill out their form stating the status of the claim (it's still at DDS, same as last month, and probably the same as next month), or other similar makework you guys send in is just about rock bottom on my priority list.
I'll happily process a 1696 as I get them, since it's simple and I can be done with it after a 2-minute RASR input. And I'll pass on submitted medical evidence immediately, because yeah that needs to get in front of an examiner.
But the passive-aggressive fax cover sheets from claims factories like Citizens Disability with underlined comments like FOURTH REQUEST only accomplish giving me a chuckle. They can have one of their Indian call center employees call the 800 number for a status request. My time is quite literally too limited, and too valuable for crap like that.
But seriously, you may also be seeing complex workloads delayed because there is nobody, or very few people in the offices that have the expertise to work them. Part of the attrition we've been suffering the last decade has involved a very serious loss of institutional knowledge. It's not just our rules that are complex- our methods are as well, and we do a poor job capturing that knowledge in official training documents. There's a ton of verbal lore on how to make our IT do what it's supposed to.
Your last sentence is so correct. There are many things that I have learned only by years of experience on my own and from others. Some as simple as a medical source for DDS that is listed by a name combination that makes no sense and an address that is a PO box in a nearby city. So you can't find it by name, address or city. If I just wing it I am marked down for not getting the preferred address. One small example of many things that aren't written down for new employees.
DeleteWhat you appear to be requesting is SSA concentrate on paying retroactive benefits to someone who is already being paid vs retirement benefits to someone who isn't being paid. SSA should get those retroactive benefits released but paying new RSI claims is and should be a higher priority.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is the reason. Initial claims and appeals are always the top priority because they get people on the record and receiving benefit checks. At least from the PSC perspective, windfall offsets are also high priority but claims and appeals are first.
DeleteRight but the original post was about windfall offsets which are done to release past due funds, not pay initial claims.
DeleteLet's say YOU have been waiting for 2, 3, 4 YEARS to be paid... they start paying you, but only from say, today. Now, they want you to wait 6 months or a year or more to get you what they owe you. Sounds okay, to you? Okay, how about SSA. in order to makeup for its budget woes, hires new people...but, doesn't start paying them for 2 or 3 years. Then says, maybe we'll get around to getting you your backpay in 6 months, or a year? What would you think of that?
DeleteSix months to do an offset would be considered lighting fast compared to some Phoenix FO's who are taking 2 years and counting....
ReplyDeleteNot sure why there is so much bickering back and forth between attorney reps and front line field office staff on this blog. We should be on the same side. Its agency upper management and politicians that are the problem. The processes involved in Title II apps do not make sense and need to be modernized. There is no reason to have FO staff manually process attorney forms in 2023. This should be automated. Sanction the bad actor attorneys that abuse an automated appointment process, and all of our lives can be made easier.
ReplyDeleteProcess & IT solutions need to be more openly discussed and debated. Because it is clear at this point that simply hiring more people will not fix the agency--especially if the hiring and training processes are broken too.