From a "Dear Colleague" letter from Dawn Bystry, Deputy Associate Commissioner, Office of Strategic and Digital Communications, Social Security Administration:
Recently, we notified you that we are no longer accepting faxed applications. We appreciate the feedback we received on the notification and want to provide clarifying information. ...
As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our services and the public’s ability to apply for benefits in person. In response, we implemented various temporary flexibilities – temporary changes to our policies and business processes. These flexibilities included accepting faxed applications as validly signed applications if they contained a legible, handwritten signature. ...
With the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency as of May 11, 2023, we evaluated our temporary flexibilities and decided to discontinue accepting faxed applications. Since we have reopened our offices to walk-in traffic and expanded in-person services, we determined that continuing to accept signatures on faxed applications was no longer justified given the risk that bad actors could use faxed applications to commit fraud. However, you can still use a fax to help your clients. Although we will no longer accept faxed, signed applications as valid applications, a claimant can still submit a faxed application to establish a protective filing date. Upon receiving the faxed application, we will contact the claimant or a proper applicant, go over the information provided, and obtain a signature to validate the application. ...
I've got a few questions:
- What degree of problem has there ever been with faxed claims?
- Why is a faxed claim more subject to fraud than a mailed claim or any other type of claim?
- How does a fraudulent filed disability claim actually get approved? They don't just look at the form and put someone on benefits. (I know there's presumptive disability but that really wouldn't get you very far with a fraudulent scheme.) Disability claims have to proceed through disability determination. That usually involves phone calls with the claimant. Medical evidence is gathered. There is at least one internal level of review after a determination that someone is disabled. Don't you think there would be problems getting a phony claim through all this without anyone noticing that something looks fishy? I'm no expert on fraud but I'm pretty sure that there are easier ways to commit fraud than submitting a fraudulent disability claim by fax.
- Does Ms. Bystry have any clue about the degree of stress that the field offices are under? Maybe she should work in one for a month or two.
- Why does Ms. Bystry think it important to waste field office time with such obsessive concerns?
- If she's so concerned about security, maybe she should just force claimants to show up in the office with three types of identification? (I hope I'm not giving her ideas.)
- Is there anyone over Ms. Bystry who can ask whether this emphasis on security is a bit too much?
20 comments:
Spam emails I don’t read
"Does Ms. Bystry have any clue about the degree of stress that the field offices are under? Maybe she should work in one for a month or two."
Nope, none of the senior leadership do. Not at the regional level, and especially not at the HQ level. SSA leadership is so out of touch, it's astounding. Many leaders have either never worked at the field level period, or they worked in an FO like 20-25 years ago, when the system had millions of less beneficiaries, with more employees to actually take the claims and process the work. In the current climate at SSA, 99% of "leadership" couldn't last a month being a Claims Rep in a field office. Leadership at SSA is delusional to its core. One of the biggest issues is that the RO and HQ leadership are insulated from the repercussions of their stupid decisions.
Guys - leadership at HQ and in the ROs are fully aware of how bad it is across the agency. The problem is they have no incentive to do anything to fix it. That's what makes this all the more galling. They know how miserable you are. They just don't care.
Why stick you neck out and propose fixes that could backfire when you can sit back, blame the lack of budget, and collect your annual SES performance bonus?
Kilolo is not holding these people responsible, so here we are. Heck - I'm not sure she's even paying attention.
This is why the agency needs real leadership yesterday.
For the DDS, we accept faxed records but not those sent by email. The problem I see with faxing is not potential fraud but that many times people spend money on faxing stuff from Staples or some such and the fax never goes through. So if they apply by fax they may think they applied but have not. Also.many times the claimant brings paper forms or records to the DO but it never gets scanned into the file for DDS. It seems accepting faced applications would create more work for the field office not less
She’s not a decision maker on this, but a spin doctor for ludicrous policies and practices decisions made by others in SSA. Her statement is wrong in that FOs, one in particular in my State, won’t act on the fax application until signed app received in their office. They won’t call anyone for attestation based on faxed app.
The policy makes no sense. Faxing apps in essence scans the forms into Work Trax which prevents SSA from having to scan them in. Do they keep the signed paper apps…likely not. They’re converted to digital image which is what the fax does.
Dawn is merely the messenger, whose name got attached to this letter. These decisions are made by those above her, likely in the Office of the Commissioner.
Who uses a fax machine anymore? It would be way more inconvenient for me to fax something than to file online or mail it in. Only Lawyers from the 90's still think faxing is a valid form of communication in this day and age.
It’s funny to me how many people are posting that Dawn is out of touch with reality, or Dawn doesn’t know how the decisions affect the field etc. Dawn is in OCOMM and I guarantee you she had no say whatsoever in this decision. If you are going to call leaders naive for not knowing how things work in the field, don’t be hypocritical and make comments about how decisions are made if you have no idea. I guarantee this was a joint decision made by OGC, OC, OPSOS, ODP and probably also the folks in privacy and disclosure. Nobody just wakes up and makes this kind of decision. I don’t know the backstory but I would bet there was a legal authority for accepting faxed documents that expired when the state of emergency did and the agency would have to go through rule making to make it permanent. Remember how long it took to get permission for attested 827s and not require a wet sig? Nothing happens in a vacuum for decisions like this. The fact OCOMM released this and not OC press or OLCA press guarantees this was a multi-disciplinary AC level decision.
@329 pm There is the advantage that the forms would now be in SSA's electronic file whereas the mailed ones aren't automatically. I believe the lawyer would also have a receipt showing the forms were received.
It would be interesting to see how often, of ever, there have been any fraudulent forms filed via fax. It seems to me the same fraudster could just forge a signature if faxes are not acceptable.
Mail it in? That’s a good one. I trust SSA less with the mail than I do the USPS. At least with a fax you get a confirmation.
Faxed, mailed, it's all the same junk. When you call up later to ask why the document wasn't processed, they claim they don't know who got it and have no record of it. Then you have to fax it again to the attention of the person you just spoke with and call up an hour later to confirm that this time it was received and picked up to be processed by that person. Even when uploading a document with an appeal filed online, they'll fail to see and process a document at times, and I have to call up and find out what happened. Years ago, there were hearing offices to which I would hand deliver paper records for hearings, and like a Houdini act come the day of the hearing half the records didn't make it to the paper exhibits file, and nobody knew where the missing records went. I Would then have to resubmit duplicates brought by me again on date of hearing, and stress with reviewing the paper file before the hearing to see what records actually made it into the exhibits file and which disappeared. Of course there was also having to convince that ALJ that you didn't just bring new records to the hearing for the first time on the date of the hearing.
Bottom line is it doesn't matter how you deliver the documents. If there is no internal control to make sure everything received is processed, and staff is overworked, documents will mysteriously disappear to lessen the workload of overworked employees.
We file the applications online and do a paper application to which we attach an original signature and we fax and send the app by certified mail. This may cause more work for the local office but until the agency comes up with a rational and sane way to handle things, we have no choice but to do this. Even with this, including an original signature, some local office won't process the app until they call the claimant and verify it. If they can't reach the claimant, they do nothing. This seems to me to be a serious due process violation. The agency has, in its possession, a signed, valid application and it constructively denies the claim by refusing to process the application with no notice to either the claimant or attorney. And, if you file an appeal on this, they simply refuse to process that also. I've considered filing an appeal in FDC but really don't want to do that. May not have any choice as the agency is refusing to provide any notice or hearing on these claims.
I understand this is a disability blog but the acceptance, or non acceptance of, faxed applications isn’t specific to Disability claims. If SSA accepts faxed applications it would apply to Retirement claims as well. Based on FO experience, retirement claims are where most of the initial claims fraud occurs.
@1234pm. In over 30 years of processing T2 retirement claims, I only came across fraudulent retirement claims when there was a spat of fraudulent Internet claims. I haven't done internet claims in a few years but almost all of the anomalous ones were uninsured foreign born claimants.
I don't know what the difference would be between mailed in claims with an original signature and faxed or photocopied claims submitted by mail.
That sounds like you’re creating a problem where there shouldn’t be one. If you’re submitting a third party internet claim and the following that up with a paper application, you are in fact submitting two separate claims. That certainly isn’t helping and absolutely sounds like calling the claimant would be appropriate.
Why not just ensure the claimant returns the wet signature page for the claim you filed online for them. That would be making things simpler, rather than making them more confusing like your aforementioned practice of multiple claims.
We submit the paper application with the signature because we were told at one time that if we did that, there would not be a need to call the claimant. We frequently have office deny they received applications even though we have green cards. It's amazing that it only takes a second for them to find a claim once you tell them who signed for it. If we didn't send the paper claim, they would simply deny they ever got the app. Some of these claimants barely manage to get through the day. Getting them to return a piece of mail can sometimes be very difficult. We try but sometimes they don't have minutes on their phone or can't be reached for various reasons. Sometimes they don't get their mail because they have moved to another relative or friends couch. That is why we try to get everything we can up front. If the agency has, in its possession, a valid, signed application, the failure to process it without any notice to the claimant or attorney is a due process violation.
Understandable but then just submit the paper application. Not a third party internet that requires the wet signature page or contact with the claimant.
Just send the paper application via certified mail. Otherwise like I said, technically you’re submitting two claims, one third party and one first party.
With the type of new hires we are getting and the others with one foot out the door, you’re giving them a way to make sure they don’t process things due to “confusion”.
Sad but true.
@939AM I'd guess that when the field office says there is no record of the claim that the person is looking at pending claims on MCS. When you tell them someone signed for it they probably check and find that it was scanned in but hasn't been worked yet.
Again, with the personal attacks. We should have learned by now, no? Dawn Bystry has nothing to do with this. Here's how it works... In my office, we have a drawer where all of the faxed 1696s and other medical evidence are stored when there is no claim pending. When we get this stuff, we then begin the arduous process of initiating outreach to a claimant, because you can't have an appointment without a claim, waste countless hours trying to cold-call claimants by phone but because no one answers a call from SSA due to scamming (really, mostly because we broadcast that we don't cold-call people!!) we have to send mailed letters. Then, maybe after a few weeks, several calls and mailed outreach -- we might get a claim. But, bazinga there's a solution!! Maybe how about this, we allow you and the person you want to represent (the applicant) to log in and authenticate behind MySSA or a rep portal. We ask the person you are representing to electronically authorize you to serve as your representative, and then, the two of you can file a claim online together.. Making THIS happen is overdue by two decades and there should be a complete overhaul of the people responsible for this policy in ODP and OGC who are accountable for the current state of this workload.
Easy my guy, you’re gonna have a stroke. Take care of yourself, the work isn’t going anywhere.
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