From a recent report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:
SSA did not ensure employees made complete and accurate capability determinations for disabled beneficiaries who previously had payees. We estimate, for approximately 19,000 disabled beneficiaries who previously had payees, there was no evidence SSA determined the beneficiaries were capable of managing, or directing the management of, their benefits. In addition, there was no evidence SSA performed proper follow-up development. SSA paid approximately $887 million in benefits directly to these beneficiaries without evidence to show they were capable of, or were, using the benefits to meet their basic needs. Finally, we estimate SSA did not properly document capability determinations for approximately 6,700 beneficiaries.
This occurred because SSA did not have effective system controls to ensure employees properly documented their capability determinations. Additionally, SSA did not have controls to ensure employees authorized direct payments to incapable beneficiaries in accordance with SSA’s policy and properly performed the follow-up reviews after they made interim direct payment to those
10 comments:
I guess the Office of Inspector General thinks that SSA staffing levels are sufficient enough to do follow ups on rep payee cases. Thanks Inspector General for weighing in from your ivory tower.
Maybe the Inspector General for SSA should look in the mirror.
In March 2023, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) called for President Joe Biden to remove Social Security Administration Inspector General Gail Ennis for failing the essential duties of her mission. The office Ennis oversees has issued crushing fines to elderly people, people with disabilities, and those already struggling to make ends meet and allegedly retaliated against whistleblowers alongside other misconduct and mismanagement. However, more than four months after POGO’s letter, Ennis is still at her post, and reports of whistleblower retaliation continue against a backdrop of disfunction.
Been an FO employee for almost 20 years. Never heard of “ follow-up reviews after they made interim direct payment”. Guess that probably proves part of OIG’s point. I have my Monday morning reading figured out…
DDS determines people are incapable too frequently. The spouse of the owner of our office was determined to need a payee. She was the one that ran the business part of the office with SSA. My default position was not to trust their determinations. If the person seemed fairly normal and especially if they had relatives who thought they'd be okay, I made them their own payee. Not to mention those who were determined to need a payee that were managing their own worker's comp or public disability benefits that were much higher than their SSA benefit.
This audit is a total joke. If anything, employees overdevelop for payees and delay benefits unnecessarily. Most claimants can manage their own funds. Just because the technician failed to document the rationale in the atrocious eRPS system doesn’t mean a bunch of incapable claimants are getting check. If anything OIG again proved its own incompetence.
A lot of these same folks who would be incapable will jump through every single hoop to get paid directly. You can’t help everyone
Lax oversight dating back more than 20 years has been a sever problem for older disabled persons who have applied and won DAC disability claims, who often have many years of back pay due to them that ends up being taken away because a parent, often unknown to the claimant, had applied for SSI under claimants SSN with SSA going along with whatever the parent had told them in order for them to be the adult child’s representative payee, and worst, had SSA deposit their adult child’s monthly payments directly to the parents personal checking acct. Investigations most always finds SSA never bothered to speak or have any correspondence directly with the claimant, they just accepted whatever the parent told them as the gospel truth. This of course often has catastrophic consequences which the SSA is not often keen to admit responsibility nor correct without intervention of the courts – just more litigation as a result of SSA sloppiness that was easy to prevent.
“This occurred because SSA did not have effective system controls to ensure employees properly documented their capability determinations. Additionally, SSA did not have controls to ensure employees authorized direct payments to incapable beneficiaries in accordance with SSA’s policy and properly performed the follow-up reviews after they made interim direct payment to those ”
Yes, part of the problem is SSAs terrible systems, but another large part is not having the employee count to do all this crap. This has been beaten to death time and time again, SSA doesn’t have enough employees for the insane workloads it asks its employees to accomplish.
I believe that the “follow ups” being mentioned here are: POMS GN00504.105, Section B.2 “Direct Payment to an Incapable Beneficiary.” I’m no longer with SSA, but in the 5+ years I was a Claims Rep, I had never heard of this, nor had I ever heard it mentioned in meetings, not even mentioned by coworkers.
DDS can’t make a capability determination. That is reserved for the field office. You don’t have to automatically appoint a payee because dds says capability is an issue.
This reminds me of when DDS came to my FO to tell us how to complete the 3368 and 3369 when we did the paper forms. If the applicants could quickly and concisely answer all questions, the forms could be completed in an hour. But applicants don't have all of their doctor information, meds info, job dates and descriptions, etc. The detailed info DDS thought we should get would take about 2 hours for each claimant. Not feasible when one has 4 or 5 disability appointments starting at 9 am. OIG recommendations were always ridiculous given staffing, and this was when the offices were fairly well staffed.
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