Dispositions continue to outpace receipts at Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO), i.e., it's taking less time to get a hearing on a disability claim. The biggest reason is that cases are hung up at lower levels of review where backlogs are burgeoning. One day that dam will burst and OHO will be inundated.
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Collateral estoppel is back! This means dds will be less backlogged
ReplyDelete9:53, can see the new POMS at https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0427515001
ReplyDeleteBut you're saying it will impact DDS backlog, can you cite your source? or share more how you think this is material to the >1.5MM DDS case backlog?
how does collateral estoppel reduce backlog?
ReplyDeleteA lot of claims could be approved in the field office instead of sending the file to DDS.
Delete@9:53am,
ReplyDeleteI don't know what you are seeing that nobody else is.
The overall rules remain the same as when FO processing of collateral estoppel was halted in 2019. That is, all potential collateral estoppel cases go to DDS. Period.
The 2019 processing change will never be repealed, due to the fact that FO personnel were adopting uncountable numbers of cases that they should not have even under the old rules. Granted, a large part of the problem was sub-par training (i.e. completely non-existent training) and confusing rules; however, there were also a large number of employees who clearly knew better who were also purposefully knowingly miss-applying the rules to make it easier on themselves rather than doing their jobs properly.
In other words, nothing new here.
2:53 you are wrong. It is coming back allowing FOs to allow cases. I’ve heard it on national calls so idk what you “sources” are
ReplyDelete@6:18pm, 2:53pm here.
ReplyDeleteI was mainly stating the history of why collateral estoppel went away (I was involved and have a lot of knowledge on this subject that you may not be privy to) and was giving my personal opinion (I'm retired now, so I no longer have agency sources).
Now, if it indeed comes back as you say (and, if you've heard it on national calls, I have no reason to doubt your statements), it will never be the panacea that it previously was.
People were willy-nilly adopting cases right and left, ignoring the literal major medical listing revisions. To date, there have been at least 13 listing changes that I know of in all the major, important categories in the last 15-18 years ending with 2023) that will throw up literal roadblocks on a majority of potential collateral estoppel adoptions. Those cases will have to go to the DDSes.
To prevent the same thing from happening again, they'll have to come up with some way to enforce the policy. And, given the agency's extremely poor level of staff training these days, I have my doubts that most employees will be able to do it correctly without ending up right back where we were in 2019.
The policy will limit how many cases are sent to dds
ReplyDeleteThe commissioner sent a message that the field offices would do all collateral estoppels that were properly allowed. This is not consistent with current rules so no idea how it would be implemented. It will have minimal effect on DDS backlogs. It may save DO time as they will not have to get sources 827s etc. on the claims they take.
ReplyDelete