From Federal News Network:
The Social Security Administration is rolling out nationwide systems in the coming months that will impact how the agency schedules appointments for initial claims and triages its workload to employees.
SSA employees told Federal News Network that they’re used to processing claims submitted locally, but will soon tackle a nationwide inventory of cases.
Employees are wary that these changes will introduce more complexity to their workloads, as well as a higher risk of overpayments that SSA would have to claw back.
“Someone who applies in California could be speaking to an SSA rep in Maine,” one SSA employee said. …
[A] SSA employee said staff were briefed on these changes this week. The employee said staff submitted multiple requests to management seeking clarification on these points, but were told to “worry about today, not tomorrow.” …
18 comments:
The don’t worry be happy administration. 😀
Requests to management seeking clarification on these points, but were told to “worry about today, not tomorrow.
For claim taking, does it matter if a CA claimant speaks to an SSA rep in Maine?
If only those in charge would actually look ahead to tomorrow and realize that doing things correctly today lessens the workloads of tomorrow. It also lessens the overpayments paid to claimants that we will never fully recover in most cases. Looking ahead actually means being good stewards of the trust fund. Is that just not important?
Lack of personnel is a big problem. SSA cannot handle the workload with its severely depleted workforce. Until that is recognized, service will continue to fail.
They promise we won’t take any more appointments in a day than we take now. Don’t trust that one bit. I suspect we will be expected to take one case after another for all day.
Possibly. For SSI, there are various income sources that are unique to states or regions (just one example is given in the article).
Also, for RSI, common law marriage can present problems as not every state recognizes that. And states have different rule on paternity that can affect dib and RSI auxiliary and survivor claims.
Could they have a spreadsheet with every state's rules to refer to?
From the article: “An SSA spokesperson told Federal News Network that ‘erroneous instructions recently issued have been withdrawn and our employees have been notified’.”
Baloney
The number of people who must draft and then review each policy is staggering. No way this was erroneous at time of issue. More backlash and then backtracking.
They could. But the efficiency is then lost. You could spend 2x or 3x the time researching instead of doing additional appointments.
I foresee payment issues occurring because of incorrect processing of claims because of unique state specific issues.
Wait until someone processes a case wrong for someone who lives in Washington and loses their food stamps because the not-intuitive SSI screen if done incorrectly terminates food stamps.
It absolutely does matter. It impacts both programs. SSI can be fairly state-specific. State supplements/living arrangments, trust decisions, cash assistance and food stamp verification, facility determinations, adoption subsidy and more are state-specific. For SSD, workers comp varies by state. Employees now have familiarity with facilities, local tribes, medical institutions, etc. Local offices oftentimes represent servicing areas, so office translations are smoother. Birth verifications will also be impacted. The counterargument is that one state’s claims may be prioritized to agents in that state but it’s not guaranteed. Absolute cluster.
This would work better (I'm not saying it would work perfectly) if field offices promptly uploaded all the documents they get by mail, fax, and hand-delivery into WorkTrack, and profiled them correctly. Unfortunately there isn't enough staff, and many of them are not sufficiently trained and supervised, for this to actually happen. I don't know what happens with documents that come through Upload Documents--those are probably easier for people at other field offices to see, right?
Do you live in Fantasy Island?🏝 We barely have enough staff to stay above water.
A centralized intake would help (like the VA has). Then centralize processing so you have people doing the same thing all the time instead of trying to do a dozen different things.
Did the VA lose thousands of employees during the DOGE cuts?
A second SSA employee told Federal News Network that the purpose of these changes is to “smooth over” staffing shortages. The agency lost about 7,000 employees through voluntary incentives last year. It also relocated many of its employees from its headquarters and regional offices to field offices.
Besides the state specific rules I can see plenty of other issues. Will time zone be taken into consideration? Will workload swell from coast to coast as time passes? What about proofs? There are many documents that must be seen in person. Will you go to your local office for that and then have a rep upload the proofs but not adjudicate? I do see a LOT of upside to this but it makes more sense a year ago when we had the 7,000 extra staff and nationwide support.
Correct. Nothing erroneous. The training specifically said we are phone only and had to get the public to adjust their expectations
My level 1 FO received 2 new reassignments last year from farther up the food chain as a result of DOGE. One has already been reassigned to his old position because it was mission critical as it turns out (imagine that) and the other is in month 10 of his cartoon character led training CS training...I expect him to retire when its done. Meanwhile we've lost 7 employees in that same timeframe and are triaging workloads, with a 3 hour wait in our lobby just to schedule an appointment and the local phone lines sits with 30+ in the queue at all times. The new 800# initiative plucked two more from us, so now less to work the lobby/phones. We're down to two CSRs, so CSs doing the CSR service while claims just sit. We cant keep up with appointments, let alone approvals, worktrack numbers are meaningless at this point. But we're doing the best we can with the limited people we have because thats what we signed up to do. Help people. These clowns running the show have zero regard for proper customer service.
Thank you to all of you on here that keep doing your best like the rest of us. The ones that depend on us, appreciate it.
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