NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), whose members work at state agencies making disability determinations at the initial and reconsideration levels for Social Security, has released its most current newsletter, concerning its National Training Conference in Oklahoma City in August. Presentations by John Owen, Associate Commissioner of the Office of Disability Determinations, Hope Grunberg, Associate Commissioner of the Office of Disability Policy (ODP), Ben Gurga, Deputy Associate Commissioner of ODP, Kasey Torres, Director of the Division of Disability Quality and Kevin Huse, Deputy Assistant Inspector General For Cooperative Disability Investigations are summarized.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization for those working at state Disability Determination Services (DDS) making initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has issued its Summer 2024 newsletter.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) has posted its Spring 2024 Newsletter. NADE's members make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims.

NADE Newsletter

      The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has issued its Summer 2024 newsletter.  To be honest, there’s not a lot of news in it but NADE members deserve a shoutout. It’s a tough job. I wish they’d approve more claims but if the truth were known they’d probably agree. Don’t blame them. The problem is much higher up.

NADE Newsletter

      The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has issued its Spring 2023 newsletter. There’s information about a couple of meetings they’ve had with agency officials.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations for Social Security, has posted its latest newsletter. There's much in it about briefings they've received from Social Security officials.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on disability claims for the Social Security Administration, has released its Spring 2022 newsletter. Almost all NADE members work for state governments who handle disability determination for Social Security at the first two levels of review. The states do the work under contract with Social Security. I won't bother explaining why states do this work but it goes back to the very beginning of disability determination for Social Security.

    There's a lot more in this newsletter that will be of interest beyond the NADE membership but here's a little nugget from a summary of a presentation by Grace Kim, Deputy Commissioner of Operations and some other SSA officials at NADE's mid-year meeting, "... to date in FY22, the [Disability Determination Service employee] attrition rate has increased in the examiner positions from 19.8% last fiscal year and is on track to hit 24.4% this fiscal year. ..." That is a staggeringly high turnover rate. I'm an employer. I don't know how you get complex work done with that high a turnover rate -- and yes, disability examiners do complex work. This is a big red flag telling us that something is very wrong and needs urgent attention.

IMAGEN How Skeptical I Am

      The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on disability claims for the Social Security Administration, has released its Winter 2021 Newsletter. Among other things it discusses a video conference held in September, particularly a presentation on IMAGEN, which is:

... a tool for reviewing evidence. It has a search engine for specific types of data like pathology reports, diagnoses and listing level labs. It recognizes synonyms, acronyms and abbreviations. It can suggest listings for analysis. In a case with thousands of pages, it can scan for whatever you ask it to. It’s been rolled out in 17 states so far. ...

When claimant medical and related evidence is received, IMAGEN transforms the evidence in real-time, into machine-readable text that enables enhanced search capabilities and intelligent analysis of medical record content. The medical evidence is analyzed to identify key clinical findings using a robust clinical vocabulary specialized for SSA's disability adjudication needs. This enables the identification of severe medical impairments (step 2 of sequential evaluation) which are then mapped directly to SSA's established diagnosis codes and SSA's Disability Listings (step 3 of sequential evaluation). Specific dated encounters and reports are also identified in the evidence, allowing the user to organize the evidence by section types (inpatient, out-patient), report types (MRI, Pathology, Post-operative, etc.), and chronologically. In upcoming releases, IMAGEN will be able to identify content in the medical record that relates directly to the claim-ant's physical function and mobility, as used in steps 4 and 5 of the disability sequential evaluation. IMAGEN currently supports Initial and Reconsideration level disability claims. ...

IMAGEN has a cadre of representatives from multiple components, including ODP, ODD, DDS, OHO, and OQR that provide feedback, which allows the IMAGEN team to continue to refine and improve IMAGEN's user interface, predictive analytics and other features. ...

SSAB Roundtable On Medical Evidence Collection

     From the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB):

On Thursday afternoon, July 29, from 12:45 to 4 pm EDT, the Board will bring together state Disability Determination Services managers and staff, a claimant attorney, and former Social Security executives for a roundtable on the agency’s medical evidence collection.

Register Here

The roundtable will cover an introduction to the evidence collection process and state approaches to collecting evidence.

Participants:

• Bob Emrich, Senior Technical Consultant SSA Portfolio, Peraton; former Director, Federal DDS, SSA (retired)
• Marjorie Garcia, President, National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE); Disability Analyst, Oregon DDS
• Paul Kreger, Medical Professional Relations Officer, Iowa DDS
• Jennifer Nottingham, Legislative Director, NADE; Operations Manager, Nevada DDS
• Marjorie Portnoy, Managing Partner, Portnoy Disability Practice in Radnor, Pennsylvania
• Teresa Sizemore-Hernandez, Professional Relations Team Leader, Virginia DDS
• Melissa Spencer, former Deputy Associate Commissioner, Office of Disability Policy, SSA (retired)
• Sara Winn, Immediate Past President, NADE; Program Specialist, Louisiana DDS

NADE Newsletter

      The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of employees who make disability determinations for Social Security at the initial and reconsideration levels, has released its Summer 2021 newsletter.

NADE Newsletter

      The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on disability claims for the Social Security Administration, has posted its Winter newsletter.

     Here's an excerpt that concerns something I haven't yet seen in my office but probably will, eventually:

For more than a year, analysts across the nation have seen a huge influx in CDB cases [Childhood Disability Benefits, also known as Disabled Adult Child or DAC cases]  cross our desks, with people filing for Childhood Disability Benefits years or even decades after they were approved for SSI. A 38-year-old applying for Childhood benefits? Why now?The OIG’s office conducted an audit last year, summarized in a report submitted in December entitled, “Follow-up on Dis-abled Supplemental Security Income Recipients Potentially Eligible for Childhood Disability Benefits.” ... 

OIG recommended that SSA instruct their staff in the importance of following up on potential leads to other benefits and assessing eligibility for other programs during redetermination and initial claims. They renewed their recommendation that SSA establish an automated solution that identifies SSI recipients who may be entitled to CDB. ...

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of personnel involved in making initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has released its most recent newsletter. One thing I noticed is that it says that the Disability Case Processing System (DCPS), a set of software programs, is now "official" even though it has not yet been rolled out at every Disability Determination Service. DCPS has been controversial. I hope   they've got the bugs out of the system.

NADE Newsletter

     From the Spring 2020 newsletter of the National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), the voluntary organization of personnel who make disability determinations for Social Security at the initial and reconsideration levels, concerning a meeting with Grace Kim, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner of Operations and John Owen, the Associate Commissioner of the Office of Disability Determinations:

... The NADE board brought up an agenda item that was noticed in various regions. There have been problems seen where the DDS [Disability Determination Service] is contacted by an office claiming to be an appointed representative who filed the SSA-1696 [appointing an attorney or other person to represent a Social Security disability claimant] with the field office but it is not in the electronic file. Grace mentioned that this is a customer service issue and someone has been appointed to look into the issue. ...

     This is a big problem for people like me. We keep submitting  the 1696 form repeatedly and field offices do nothing with it. This leaves us incapable of representing the claimant before the agency. This problem has been around for years and it's been getting worse.
     I don't understand the process but, apparently, it's ridiculously difficult for field office personnel to enter the appointment of a representative in their computer system. I think most of those who represent claimants would prefer some system where we could enter the information directly. I don't see how imposing this work load on field office personnel adds any layer of protection for claimants or the system. If there's some issue with us abusing the system, it's not hard to find us or to take action against us.

     There is also material in the newsletter about how NADE members are coping with the changes brought about by Covid-19. I'm not going to reproduce any excerpts here but reading it might be a good idea for those who have had little contact with DDS personnel. There are a lot of unjustified negative attitudes about disability examiners. The system may be uncaring but the people aren't.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization for those who make initial and reconsideration determinations on disability claims for Social Security, has released the Winter Edition of its newsletter.

New Occupational Information System To Be Tested Soon?

     From a summary of remarks made by John Owens, Associate Commissioner, Office of Disability Determination, Social Security Administration at a conference of the National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE):

... The replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) is nearing completion. This new version, the Occupational Information System (OIS) is a collection of occupational-related data from multiple sources, which will be accessed through an online platform called the Vocational Information Tool (VIT). Testing of the OIS/VIS systems will begin in October 2019 with a focus group using the data in the development of vocational assessments in 5,000 that will be reviewed as part of a case study. ...

     I would caution readers that Social Security has been promising for years that a new OIS is just around the corner. Later in the same issue of the NADE newsletter, there’s this from a summary of remarks made by Gail Ennis, Social Security’s Inspector General:

... Ennis reported on the upcoming Vocational Information Tool. The initial implementation was targeted for fiscal year 2020. She noted a prior report on SSA's actions in updating the Department of Labor's Dictionary of Occupational Titles. She reported that a company had been contracted to build a Vocational Information Tool that would house Occupational Information System. She stated that SSA did not accurately capture all information needed for disability determinations, including the mental demands of work, as well as the current diverse occupational fields. SSA plans to update the system in FY 2024 and at that time, this information should be included. SSA intends to update the Occupational Informational System every five years. ...

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of the personnel who make disability determinations for Social Security at the initial and reconsideration levels, has issued its Summer 2019 newsletter. Here's one item from "NADE's Top Issues for 2019":

Reduction in 15 Year Work History: Due to vast changes in the occupational landscape, it is unfair current regulations allow claims to be denied on the basis claimants have an ability to perform a job they performed previously but which no longer exists, or a job they would no longer recognize.

Nuggets From NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization for personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations for Social Security, has posted its Spring 2019 newsletter. Here's a nugget from a summary of a meeting with Jim Julian, Social Security's Deputy Associate Commissioner for the Office of Disability Policy:

... Disability Modernization: This is an initiative to update our vocational regulations to reflect changes in medical and vocational practice, technology, and the work force.

SSA [Social Security Administration] is in the early stages of studying cases to learn the impact of potential Vocational Rules Modernization (VRM) policy updates.

The agency will use this information to develop and publish a notice of proposed rulemaking.  ...

     And here's a nugget from a write-up of a  meeting with Grace Kim, Acting Deputy Commissioner of Operations and John Owen, Associate Commissioner for the Office of Disability Determinations: 

A tool being developed for disability adjudicators in the DDS [Disability Determination Services] and currently being piloted in the Iowa DDS is the IMAGEN (Intelligent Medical-Language Analysis GENeration) tool. IMAGINE is a tool to visualize, alert, summarize, search and more easily identify relevant clinical content in medical records. IMAGEN provides decisional guidance and enables disability adjudicators to leverage various machine learning technologies and predictive analytics to support data driven decisions.This program will eventually incorporate other Artificial Intelligence (AI) functions and have the ability to learn new information, adapt and evolve.

DOT Replacement Coming Soon?

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) has posted its most recent newsletter. NADE members make determinations on disability claims for Social Security at the initial and reconsideration level. Here’s an excerpt from a write up on a talk by Gina Clemons, Social Security’s Associate Commissioner for Disability Policy:

... Gina also updated the NADE audience on work underway in the agency’s Vocational Regulations Modernization (VRM) and Occupational Information Systems (OIS) projects. These companion projects have been ongoing for several years. Key to the OIS project is an ongoing effort (since 2012) with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to collect updated occupational information through the Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS) that we will use in adjudication. The good news here is that, after three years of testing and three years of data collection, BLS will publish a complete data set documenting requirements of work in the U.S. economy sometime this winter. BLS is committed to regularly updating occupational information moving forward on a 5-year refresh cycle and has already started collecting updated occupational data to refresh the ORS data set by 2024. BLS will document some of the basic mental demands of jobs in the 2024 ORS refreshed data.

The ORS data set will replace the Dictionary of Occupational Titles in adjudication. SSA has adopted an evidence-based, data-driven approach to modernizing the vocational regulations. The scope of the VRM project includes policy considerations in step 4 and 5 of the sequential evaluation process. Gina explained that several internal teams involving representatives from across SSA have been working on policy development for VRM.

 

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the people who make initial and reconsideration determinations on disability claims for the Social Security Administration, has issued its Summer 2018 newsletter.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make disability determinations at the initial and reconsideration levels for Social Security, has posted its Spring 2018 newsletter.