Did It Matter?

     About two and a half years ago Social Security changed its policies on voluntary remands, that is cases where the agency agrees that a case on appeal to the United States District Court should be remanded to the agency.

     I'm curious. Has there been a change in the rate at which Social Security agrees to voluntary remands since that change in policy? Has there been a change in what they do after voluntary remands? Did the policy change matter?

OIG On Delays In Scheduling Remands

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... Administrative law judges (ALJ) decided 49,579 Appeals Council remand decisions from Fiscal Years (FY) 2016 through 2018. Appeals Council remands represent the modification of a prior hearing decision often because the ALJ applied the wrong law, additional claimant or other witness testimony was needed, the claimant did not receive a fair hearing, or the ALJ decisional rationale was insufficient. 

SSA’s policy states that remands should be processed as a priority workload. Hearing offices are required to flag remands when they are docketed into the hearing office and assign them immediately to an ALJ for review. ...

Although remands should be processed as a priority workload, SSA does not define “priority” and does not have a processing time goal for this workload. Of the 49,579 remands processed in FYs 2016 through 2018,

• 22,144 were processed in fewer than 270 days,
• 10,043 took between 270 and 360 days,
• 5,191 took between 361 and 430 days,
• 7,179 took between 431 and 595 days,
• 4,717 took between 596 and 999 days, and
• 305 took 1,000 days or longer to process.  

Our sample analysis found some remands took longer to process because they were not always input immediately in the hearing offices’ master docket or the remands stalled in the Ready to Schedule, ALJ Review Pre-hearing, or ALJ Review Post-hearing stages. ...

     In my experience, this is definitely a problem. I've never understood what's going on behind the scenes but remands often take longer to schedule than new request for hearing cases.