Social Security has released operating statistics for its Office of Hearings Operations through the end of 2022. Click on the image to view full size.
Social Security has released operating statistics for its Office of Hearings Operations through the end of 2022. Click on the image to view full size.
7 comments:
Five years without new ALJ hiring + a growing DDS bottleneck ready to burst = hard times ahead. Commissioner Backlog (Andrew Saul) must be proud of his grand design coming to fruition.
You are right about that insinuation - break government and then blame it on those who work in government. If the cases that should be allowed at the DDS level were, there wouldn't be the backlogs at OHO.
the backlog is trickling up, but it's still below 400k, which is pretty low compared to the million+ of just a few years ago. Average processing time is higher, but I think a lot of that is SSA clearing out cases that sat for years until in-person hearings started again. You can see this in the declining percentage of cases pending over 800 or 900 days. If SSA figures out some way to get a ton of cases out of the DDS backlog, that's when the closing pendings at OHO will skyrocket.
Find a way to work within your budget. Start with approving more "obvious" cases at DDS. Then you won't have to Reconsider them, or send to an ALJ.
Still roughly at 300 pending cases per ALJ. That’s 6-7 months of hearings for most ALJs. Nowhere near the 700+ pending per ALJ back at its peak in 2017 when there were 1.2 million pending cases and ~1600 ALJs.
We're struggling to fill April dockets and little backlog at our DDS. Claimants who wanted an in person hearing now asking for a telephone hearing as the cost of gas is heading up again.
Many of these cases are lingering under the Covid Dismissal Policy - the person could be lost in space never to return and it is almost impossible to dismiss. A lot of these cases are continuing disability reviews so the claimants may not really want to be found... benefits continue...
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