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). 

Click on image to view full size

 

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.

December 26

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas

 

Employee Union Shocked That Anyone Would Think They're Dragging Their Feet On Reopening

      From Government Executive:

The Social Security Administration is again embroiled in a spat with one of its labor unions, this time over the agency’s plans to bring employees back to physical work sites. ...

Rich Couture, president of AFGE Council 215, which represents Office of Hearing Operations employees, and chief negotiator for AFGE on the agency’s reentry plan, said much of the holdup comes down to the agency’s insistence that all reentry negotiations take place at the national level and the agency’s reentry plan is too vague, given the myriad of job descriptions and working conditions across the agency. ...

“AFGE has got around 45,000 bargaining unit employees spread across virtually every component of SSA,” he said. “The positions and work they do, whether they see the public or not, and the functions that each of these components serve are very, very different, and even within the components you have subcomponents and divisions where the work can be different. There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach we can take with how the reentry process will operate, proceed and affect employees based on their position and the work they do.”

Couture said that making negotiations more difficult is distrust over whether the agency is being transparent about its plans. Union officials suspect that the agency actually has more specific reentry plans for each of its components, but is simply withholding that information in order to gain an upper hand in bargaining. ...

“SSA has been completely transparent with the labor unions representing our employees and informed them that there is only one agency-wide reentry plan, which applies to all SSA components,” [Darren] Lutz [a Social Security spokesperson] said,  “The resumption of a limited, finite number of in-person hearings for certain aged cases to be conducted by non-bargaining unit administrative law judges is distinct from the agency-level reentry plan and it is not part of reentry for bargaining unit employees.” ...

In a Dec. 17 letter to Kijakazi, AFGE National President Everett Kelley escalated the issue, citing the acting director's desire for a “reset” in labor-management relations at the agency, expressed in a conversation last month. 

“In the weeks since that conversation, I am sorry to say that labor relations at SSA have not improved at all, either in tone or in substance,” Kelley said. “Collective bargaining over reentry has been characterized by a lack of transparency, unfounded accusations of delays on the part of the union, and perhaps most concerning, an apparent refusal to engage in bargaining reentry at either the component or local level in spite of the fact that circumstances surrounding reentry vary so much both in terms of operational considerations as well as community transmission data.” ...

     Let's state the obvious. The union wants Social Security offices closed FOREVER. They want their employees to work from home FOREVER. They have zero concern for what that would mean for the public. They want reopening stalled FOREVER by endless negotiations. There are real public health threats that need to be dealt with but what the union wants to accomplish goes well beyond any legitimate public health concerns. 

     The union needs to get realistic. The public isn't going to tolerate keeping Social Security offices shuttered forever. Democrats are sympathetic to unions in general but there are limits and I think those limits will become more and more obvious if this effort at stalling continues.

It’s OK To Feel Lonely At Christmas

 

Not In Any Rush To Reopen

      A message from Social Security:

We want to give you an update on our preparations for returning our employees to local Social Security offices, a process called reentry.

You may have seen a proposed reentry date of January 3, 2022 in the draft reentry plan that we provided to our unions, or in the media. While some executives reentered on December 1, we have not set a reentry date for the rest of the agency.

The best way to reach us is online at SSA.gov, or by calling our National 800 Number or a local Social Security office. At this time, please remember that we can only provide in-person service by appointment only for limited, critical issues. And we continue to hold voluntary hearings by online video and phone. We are taking steps to increase in-person help for people unable to complete their business online or by phone.

We will keep you updated on our reentry process.

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Headcount Stays At Historically Low Number

     The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated numbers showing the headcount of employees at each agency. Here are Social Security's numbers as of June with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:

• September 59,808
  
• June 2021 59,707
  
• March 2021 60,675
• December 2020 61,816
  
• September 2020 61,447
  
• June 2020 60,515
  
• March 2020 60,659
  
• December 2019 61,969
  
• December 2018 62,946
  
• December 2017 62,777
• September 2017 62,297
• June 2017 61,592
• March 2017 62,183
• December 2016 63,364
• December 2015 65,518
• December 2014 65,430
• December 2013 61,957
• December 2012 64,538
• September 2011 67,136
• December 2010 70,270
• December 2009 67,486
• December 2008 63,733