Below is an illustration from the testimony of Katherine
Zuleger of Wausau
, WI. President, Chicago Social Security Management Association, Executive Committee Member, National Council of Social Security Management Associations to the Senate Finance Committee on June 18, 2024 on Work and Social Security Disability Benefits (I can't help thinking that some of this looks like an illustration from a sex education textbook!):
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Here are what those acronyms mean, as best I know them:
- AUX -- Auxiliary claims, such as child claims
- CDR -- Continuing Disability Review
- CO -- Central Office
- CSNO -- Centralized Special Notice Option (I don't know what that is.)
- ERPA -- Electronic Representative Payee Annual report
- GI -- I think General Information in this context
- MDW -- Modernized Development Worksheet
- MNUP -- Medicare Non-Utilization Project (to determine why an elderly person isn't using Medicare -- like maybe the person is dead.)
- PSC -- Program Service Center -- where Title II benefits are computed, among other things
- RO -- Regional Office
- RPMT -- ?
- TSC -- Teleservice Center -- where they answer most telephone calls to the 800 number
Does it really make sense to have all of this going through the field offices. I can't help but wonder if this has remained this way because they are afraid of moving jobs out of congressmen's districts.
ReplyDeleteThose categories are vastly oversimplified, as many of them involve multiple more complex workloads. It also omits some very big ones, like referrals for SSI living arrangement changes and payee misuse allegations from the TSCs.
ReplyDeleteGI calls = answering the phones for the general public in the FO. CSNO involves alternative notice options for those who are blind or who have low/limited vision. One of the options available is that an employee has to call the claimant and read their notices to them over the phone. Sounds simple, until you have to call them to read a 50 page SSI notice, their phone is disconnected, or they just don't have time to listen to you today. If there was ever a workload that needs to be contracted out, here it is!
RPMT (Representative Payee Monitoring Tool) is a database mainly used to monitor the performance of fee for service representative payees (i.e. those payees/organizations that charge claimants a fee to serve as their payee). Outside contractors also use it for conducting investigations and reviews of both people (including parents or relatives with custody) and various agencies that serve as rep payees under various projects. In general, anyone who ever has to use RPMT comes to regret the day they ever heard of it.....
One word - UNMANAGEABLE!!!!
ReplyDelete@11:50am,
ReplyDeleteNo, that isn't it. These workloads come to the field offices simply because that is the way it has always been done and the way it will always be done. Most of them require public contact; however, the agency still hasn't caught up to the cultural revolution of the invention of the telephone related to its workloads.
And, any time the agency tries to change workload responsibilities it inevitably involves turf wars between narcissistic upper level managers who see making such changes as diminishing their power or some other such drivel.
Workload-wise, we will never see a change unless we get a commissioner autocratic enough on internal workload assignment to tell those idiots to either make the changes or to pack their belongings and go find a new job. Something which is never gonna happen.
This chart is made by a field office manager to attempt to complain about the workload in a field office. It represents an incredibly myopic view of the agency. She clearly feels frustrated by her workloads and made a really ugly chart to try to show she's over-worked. I'm not sure why NCSSMA would be testifying at this hearing in the first place.
ReplyDeleteIs the chart incorrect?
Delete@4:18 - nope she’s absolutely correct and the reason they are complaining is bc we’ve hit the breaking point
DeleteCSNO is an accommodation for individual who are blind or low vision. We call and read them their letters. Word for word. I have not understood why that is still something that cannot be contracted out or at least centralized.
ReplyDelete@1:39. I think you missed the point of the hearing which has to do with the implementation of disability benefit work incentives. The field handles most of the day-to-day processing of those work incentives. Having the voice of the field present for the conversation is critical and NCSSMA is the only organized body capable of providing relevant information from the trenches.
ReplyDeleteI believe the point of the chart was to illustrate all of the demands of the FO to demonstrate why work report processing is delayed because quite frankly the same people who are being asked to fix the disability processing time, improve waiting time for an appointment, reduce lobby wait, increase phone answer rates, process redeterminations, etc. are all the same people. When the field is being pulled 435 different directions it is no wonder things are not done timely.
@4:18pm,
ReplyDeleteNo, the chart isn't incorrect. However, they are trying the shock/awe approach by numbers without actually explaining why those items are so time intensive. Congress isn't interested in listening to anything that requires more than a sentence of explanation due to political ADHD.
The workload categories listed by name in the chart simply don't reflect the underlying complexities involved in processing those workloads.
For instance, take AUX claims. Sounds like a very simple workload. However, they usually involve taking claims for spouses, children, or ex-wives (which may involve multiple households) with associated representative payee applications, withholding of attorney fees, and processing of the actual award (which may involved combined family maximums or 202(j) or other special time consuming processing). It isn't unusual for such a claim to literally require as much time or even more to take/process as an initial disability claim, depending upon how many children are involved.
E4345s? 3/4 of the SSI claims reps in the office I retired from were totally incapable of doing SSI windfall offsets in even a remotely correct fashion. As a result, the few that could do them were totally overwhelmed with doing them for that entire office.
Truthfully, PSC/OCO could come up with a similar chart, though theirs would not be so complex given how the management has purposefully limited access by the public with them.
This chart is spot on. GI means the General Inquiry Line and RPMT has to do with organizational payee site review responsibilities. Did you know that up until a few years ago until contractor reviews were put in place, field office employees were responsible for conducting on site reviews of local organizational payees? This process involved accounting reconciliations that paid accountants now do. However, the field office is responsible for completing all of the follow up work now associated with these on-site reviews. The field office is also responsible for fee for service determinations, both the initial start up of fee for service requests, and the reviews of fee for service organizations. They are also responsible for the annual certifications of organizational payees. This includes licensing and bonding. This chart is spot on. Anything that is not vanilla (as in, press a button to pay the claim) comes right to the field office from the payment center and WSUs. The field office takes the brunt of the calls for claims pending with the payment centers and WSUs. The TSC handles a large volume of phone calls, but the vast majority of record changes get forwarded to the field offices for processing. Even though we have TSCs, the field offices have long been forced to take a lot of incoming calls on the G.I. line. And we oftentimes serve as the primary contact for Medicare. Isn’t it funny that Medicare has a contracted out phone service? Yet we handle an incredibly large amount of calls dedicated to Medicare questions? And well, I’m sure that many appointed representatives might have frustrations with field offices, our highest trained people work out of the field offices. But because they handle so many front facing responsibilities, and take on so much of the work coming from other components, these most technical employees don’t have the time to process work. In fact, they are serving as service representatives answering phone calls to update direct deposits and handling replacement Social Security card applications. They literally don’t have time to get claims out for this very reason.
ReplyDelete