Martin Gerry, who is effectively Jo Anne Barnhart's right hand man at SSA, and the one who has overall charge of her plan to transform the disability adjudication process at SSA spoke today at the NOSSCR Conference in Boston. His remarks were mostly an explanation of the current plan. I noted nothing in his prepared remarks that would surprise anyone who has kept up with recent events at SSA.
Gerry was kind enough to take questions. I posed a question to him that went something like this: "A few years ago some very smart and very well meaning Social Security officials developed a plan that they thought would lead to dramatic improvements in Social Security's hearings process. They called their plan Hearing Process Improvement or HPI. There were early trials which showed problems with HPI. Despite these problems, SSA went rapidly forward into national implementation of HPI and the result was a disaster, with dramatic increases in the length of time it takes to get a hearing at Social Security. Can you assure us that you will not go forward with implementation of your plan in other regions unless and until you can demonstrate in Region I that the plan is making things better?"
There are a couple of possible simple answers to the question: "We definitely won't go forward with implementation outside Region I until we can demonstrate success in Region I" or "We're so sure this will work that we're going to procede rapidly with national implementation regardless of what happens in Region I." Gerry did not give either of these simple answers. Others may characterize what he said and it will be possible to buy a tape of what he said. What I heard was Mr. Gerry talking for some length of time without ever giving anything close to an answer to the question, which, unfortunately, suggests that Gerry and Barnhart intend to go ahead with implementation regardless, or at least that they cannot imagine failure. To be fair to Gerry, later, in response to another questioner, he came back to the question which I raised by saying that he could not imagine going forward with the plan if the number of civil actions in Region I were to dramatically increase. However, that answer is not completely reassuring since the plan is to implement this in a very different way in Region I than would be the case nationally. The plan is to have the Disability Review Board review 100% of all ALJ decisions in Region I during the trial. That would not be possible nationally. A dramatic increase in civil actions is unlikely during the trial because the replacement for the Appeals Council, the Disability Review Board, would be reviewing all decisions in much the same way that all cases are now reviewed by the Appeals Council before a civil action is possible.
Gerry was kind enough to take questions. I posed a question to him that went something like this: "A few years ago some very smart and very well meaning Social Security officials developed a plan that they thought would lead to dramatic improvements in Social Security's hearings process. They called their plan Hearing Process Improvement or HPI. There were early trials which showed problems with HPI. Despite these problems, SSA went rapidly forward into national implementation of HPI and the result was a disaster, with dramatic increases in the length of time it takes to get a hearing at Social Security. Can you assure us that you will not go forward with implementation of your plan in other regions unless and until you can demonstrate in Region I that the plan is making things better?"
There are a couple of possible simple answers to the question: "We definitely won't go forward with implementation outside Region I until we can demonstrate success in Region I" or "We're so sure this will work that we're going to procede rapidly with national implementation regardless of what happens in Region I." Gerry did not give either of these simple answers. Others may characterize what he said and it will be possible to buy a tape of what he said. What I heard was Mr. Gerry talking for some length of time without ever giving anything close to an answer to the question, which, unfortunately, suggests that Gerry and Barnhart intend to go ahead with implementation regardless, or at least that they cannot imagine failure. To be fair to Gerry, later, in response to another questioner, he came back to the question which I raised by saying that he could not imagine going forward with the plan if the number of civil actions in Region I were to dramatically increase. However, that answer is not completely reassuring since the plan is to implement this in a very different way in Region I than would be the case nationally. The plan is to have the Disability Review Board review 100% of all ALJ decisions in Region I during the trial. That would not be possible nationally. A dramatic increase in civil actions is unlikely during the trial because the replacement for the Appeals Council, the Disability Review Board, would be reviewing all decisions in much the same way that all cases are now reviewed by the Appeals Council before a civil action is possible.
