That Was Quick

      Trajector, which had acquired the Myler law firm, which is probably the largest entity representing Social Security disability claimants, has decided to withdraw its initial public offering of shares to the public, citing market conditions.

More On Sale Of Myler Disability

      I posted yesterday about Myler Disability being sold to a much larger company that plans an initial public offering (IPO). Here's some information about the Myler Companies recent financial status from the IPO document (S-1) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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     By the way, the purchase price for Myler Disability was $88.2 million. Page 74 of the S-1. Not bad for an entity that was losing money. 

     I keep thinking of Binder and Binder. The owners sold out to a private equity firm. Binder and Binder later ended up bankrupt. There probably won't be a repeat in this case but it's hard not to think of that history.

Myler Disability Acquired By Trajector Which Plans An IPO

      My understanding has been that in recent years the largest entity representing Social Security disability claimants has been Myler Disability, which was based in Utah but which represented claimants across the country. However, I now find out from a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Myler has been acquired by Trajector, Inc., a much larger company which is involved in a number of projects that seems to center around medical records. Trajector has plans to make an initial public offering of $100 million worth of shares to the public. I don't think this has happened yet, however.

     That's all I know, folks. I'd be interested in hearing more from an old Myler employee who is now a Trajector employee or anyone else who knows something about this. 

     By the way, this has more than a few similarities to the Binder and Binder saga -- without the publicity, however.

Has Anything Really Changed?

      I looked back at the numbers on posts on I made on this blog in 2021. The one that was the most read was the one announcing that Andrew Saul had been fired as Commissioner of Social Security. Coming in second was this post from March 8, 2021 which may still have relevance:

     An anonymous e-mail I received:

Hi Charles - I have been reading your blog for years.

I'm a field office manager and felt compelled to share what management has sustained for nearly twelve months.

First off - kudos to SSA for putting somewhat of plan together by sending everyone home after cancelling telework...of course. Since that time things have gotten just awful and unsustainable. 

We don’t have centralized print so management is asked to go in and pack every letter daily. Many ma agents don’t have updated mail machines so we must weigh envelopes individually and seal them by hand. The process takes hours. After outgoing is done all day - we handle incoming. Hundreds of documents from the public daily in some cases. Items go missing regularly. We open every piece and scan them into a program so employees can work. This process is even longer than outgoing mail. When it concludes - the day is likely over. As this work from home progresses we were slowly told things would return to normal but from home. Problem is we don’t the technology - everything at home takes longer. Managers were drowning in mail and still are- the calls exploded - an office like mine went from 600 calls to roughly 2000. We could not keep up - Area directors insisted on 90% answer rates. Workload immediately fell off. Instead of adjusting they increased our PSI goals in one area in particular- ssi redetermination. We had some of the highest targets ever yet we were receiving no help. Through all this management was told they could not work OT because it would look bad. We were told that management doing production was also frowned upon.

Months have passed and the agency did little to aid mgmt. in fact they made it worse. They made exceptions to allow individuals in office and mgmt was asked to pull away from mail to risk ourselves with claimants. It’s ok - they bought flimsy sneeze guard to protect us. When we asked for hazard pay or ability to carryover we were told no.

We have been wildly mistreated by the DCo front office. This year is worse still

For your audience our initials claims have gone from 125 as a goal for an initial decison to 170 days and recons from 118 to 152 days . In short it’s now average 11 months before you make it to a hearing In many cases - replacement cards take a month before processing . Record request from attys - I haven’t been able to get to them in months. You want certified record - that’s 6 months minimum. We are a disaster and holding it all together on the back of managers that are breaking. We are told we can’t let calls go but due to a nearly 500 million budget shortfall we won’t have any OT , are still expected to clear 20% more redeterminations and answer 90% of goals. Oh and all mail most be processed in 60 days.

I could go on forever - I only share to say how truly dire SSA situation is. I also share to show this who represent people that we are in a giant spiral with zero plan.

How out of touch you say - well dco touted a great Mobil check in program that they didn’t realize can’t handle foreign ss5 because a lack of having a number. They actually developed , designed, shared , gloated and didn’t realize its flaws until a manager pointed out the obvious.

Sorry for the rant and misspelling -perhaps you can take some blurbs to share with readers that we aren’t bad - we work hard - we just are given no chance for success and it’s getting worse. Thanks Charles

Happy New Year!

 

Goodbye 2021

 

Thanks, Donald Trump!

      From GOBankingRates.com:

Employers and self-employed individuals who chose to defer paying part of their 2020 Social Security tax obligation [because then President Donald Trump, as part of his re-election campaign, gave them the option or because they were federal employees who had it forced upon them by Trump] must make a payment by Jan. 3, 2022. While many received reminder billing notices from the IRS, the agency also noted that those affected are still required to make a tax payment, even if they never received a bill.

 “As part of the COVID relief provided during 2020, employers and self-employed people could choose to put off paying the employer’s share of their eligible Social Security tax liability, normally 6.2% of wages,” according to the IRS reminder. “Half of that deferral is now due on January 3, 2022, and the other half on January 3, 2023.” ...

Backlog Starts To Slowly Creep Up As Number Of ALJs On Duty And ALJ Productivity Both Decline

     The report shown below was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. It contains basic operating statistics for Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO). 

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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. ...

It’s Time

      Andrew Saul was removed as Commissioner of Social Security on July 9, 2021. There has not yet been a nomination of a new Commissioner. I have no prediction for when the nomination will come but I think it’s time.