Broadcast E-Mail From Acting Commissioner On Reopening

From: ^Commissioner Broadcast

Sent: Friday, January 21, 2022 8:58 AM

Subject: Reentry Update

A Message to All SSA Employees

On Wednesday, I shared that we reached agreement with our three labor unions.  I have additional updates to share about timing.

We are planning reentry and the implementation of new telework schedules for most employees on March 30, 2022.  This date allows us to ensure that the necessary measures are in place to keep you and the public safe, is consistent with our union agreements, and gives us time to provide you with appropriate notice of return.

I appreciate your patience while we continue to work through the reentry process.  In early February, your managers will talk with you about telework eligibility and the days for your position, as well as explain next steps including when and how to request telework.

We anticipate that field offices will restore increased in-person service to the public, without an appointment, in early April.  As we expand the availability of in-person service, we will continue to encourage the public to go online, call us for help if they cannot complete their business online, and schedule appointments in advance.  Customers who walk in without appointments may encounter delays.

We will begin limited in-person hearings in March with our management judges and plan to expand in-person hearings in the spring and early summer based on required notice to affected claimants.

 Please plan according to the dates above.  We will continue to monitor the course of the pandemic, and our reentry plan allows us respond to changing pandemic conditions.

I will continue to share updates as we move forward with our preparations for reentry.

Kilolo Kijakazi 

Acting Commissioner

Why Doesn't Social Security Have A More Sophisticated Telephone System?

      My calls to larger institutions are usually answered by sophisticated systems that tell me that "All agents are busy" but which also often give me an estimate of how long it will take before a human answers the phone. Probably more important, many of the systems give me the option of a call back. All I have to do is enter my phone number and I get a call back in less than half an hour. 

     Why doesn't Social Security's phone systems have these features? I'll give you my best guesses on the answers. They don't want to tell you how long you may be on hold because they don't want to admit just how bad their telephone service is. They can't include a call back feature because they lack the personnel to do it. Their system depends on callers getting fed up with the wait and hanging up. If that's not enough, Social Security's system just hangs up on persistent callers. They lack the personnel to handle the calls they're getting. Not now, not later in the day, not tomorrow, not ever. They have no choice but to deprive telephone service to many members of the public one way or another.

     Social Security management could just publicly admit to how bad their telephone service is and plead for more budgetary help but they feel ashamed of the situation and do everything they can to hide the problem or downplay it. They act like it's a management problem that they ought to be able to fix instead of a problem inherent in the lack of funding the agency has received. They're aided in their pathetic pretense by the House Social Security Subcommittee. In years past, that Subcommittee would have held hearings that would have exposed the problem and forced the agency to admit how bad things are. Now, it's mostly crickets. The Chairman of that Subcommittee, John Larson, seems largely uninterested in holding hearing on agency operations. I don't understand why he even wants to be the Subcommittee Chair.

     By the way, can Social Security say "Your call is important to us. Please hold" with a straight face? It seems to me that the unstated message in Social Security's telephone system is "Your call is unimportant to us. Please hang up and quit bothering us."

More On Reopening Agreements With Unions

      From Federal News Network:

... The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in SSA’s Office of Hearing Operations, said NTEU Chapter 224 has negotiated an agreement that increases telework opportunities for all employees for the first six months of the reentry back into the workplace, extends scheduling flexibilities and maximizes safety for those who return to the office.

NTEU President Tony Reardon said in a statement Thursday the union has not yet received a 30-day notice of exactly when the reentry process will begin ...

“NTEU expects the agency will revisit telework, and bargain as appropriate, on extending and expanding telework opportunities in the future,” Reardon said. ...

AFGE [American Federation of Government Employees, which represents most SSA employees] and SSA, in a memorandum of understanding, agree to hold several meetings over component-level reentry, workplace safety and evaluation period issues.

The first of these reentry meetings will take place no later than Feb. 1. The agreement requires two follow-up meetings should be completed no later than March 1.

The memo specifies that a phased reentry for AFGE bargaining unit employees will begin no earlier than 30 days after the agreement is implemented.

Within seven days of the final reentry meeting, the memo states AFGE may submit a bargaining request to address “unresolved issues.” ...

As long as the MOU remains in effect, all AFGE employees, contractors, visitors and members of the public will be required to wear masks inside SSA facilities, regardless of vaccination status. ...

     And more from Government Executive:

...  According to an agreement reached between the Social Security Administration and the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents workers across several of the agency’s subcomponents, the current target date for employees to return to the office is March 30, although that date can be postponed if there is another spike in COVID-19 cases.

 The deal also provides AFGE’s various component-level councils and locals the opportunity to bargain over reentry issues specific to their offices between now and March 1, something the union has been pushing for since last year. And it sets up a framework for the union and management to continue to negotiate for six months after reentry begins over operational and personnel policies, including over issues like post-pandemic telework. ...

The agreement with AFGE also eliminates some pre-pandemic barriers to telework instituted under a Federal Service Impasses Panel-mandated contract during the Trump administration, including so-called "core days" in which every employee was expected to report to the office, and the use of minor reprimands to bar employees from working from home altogether. ...

SSA Reaches Reopening Agreements With All Three Labor Unions

     A press release:

Statement from Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, about Agency Reentry

“I am very pleased to share that we have successfully reached agreement with our three labor unions on our reentry plan.

This will be a significant step toward improving access to our services as we implement this plan.

I want to thank our labor representatives for working with management to achieve this outcome, which will help us better serve the public.

I also want to thank the public and our employees for their patience during this unprecedented time.

I know the public will have questions about what this means to them.

For now, you should continue to reach us online at www.socialsecurity.gov or by calling our National 800 Number or your local office. We will let you know when we are able to restore additional services.”

Memorandum Of Understanding Between ALJ Union And SSA

     NOSSCR has obtained a copy of the memorandum of understanding between the union representing Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and the Social Security Administration. I suppose I may as well post the link here. 

     I guess we all hope that a lot of what's in this agreement will turn out to be overkill because after the Omicron variant subsides almost everyone will have some degree of immunity to Covid and the number of Covid cases and their severity will die down to the point that the threat is similar to the threat posed by seasonal influenza. I'm really, really tired of Covid and so are you.

When I Say Attorneys Representing Social Security Claimants Are Hurting, I'm Not Kidding

     Social Security has posted final numbers showing total fees paid to attorneys for representing claimants in 2021. Let's do a comparison with the last two years:

• 2019: 390,809 fees were paid for a total of $1,214,557,861. 
  
• 2020: 360,493 fees were paid, down 8% from 2019. The total fees paid were $1,081,523,523, down 11% from 2019.
• 2021: 296,847 fees were paid, down 18% from 2020 and down 24% from 2019. The total fees paid were $932,887,938, down 14% from 2020 and down 23% from 2020.
  

      One big problem is that even though the number of new claims filed has gone down significantly, the number of clients at Social Security law firms hasn't gone down much because cases are so piled up at the initial and reconsideration levels, not to mention the huge backlogs of claimants waiting to be paid after favorable decisions. Our workloads are still there even though our gross receipts have plummeted. There are fewer hearings but more effort expended trying to make sure Social Security does what it is supposed to do. In the current environment many cases get sidetracked for months. Some get lost. Overwhelmed agency employees do little to sort out these problems. Social Security employees may get tired of lawyers repeatedly contacting them about cases but if you're on the receiving end, it's impossible to tell a case that's just in a backlog pile from one that's not even in the pile.

     Contrary to what many Social Security employees may think, representing Social Security claimants is a high overhead, low profit margin business in the best of times. Everybody need normality at Social Security. Social Security attorneys also need and deserve a cost of living adjustment in the maximum attorney fee under the fee agreement process.

ALJs To Start Returning To Their Offices In May

Welcome Back!

      The ALJ Discussion Forum is a message board for Social Security Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and wannabe ALJs. It's independent of the Social Security Administration. Yesterday, reports began to be published on the message board about an e-mail that ALJ union members received telling them of an agreement to allow ALJs to return to their offices on a voluntary basis beginning on May 4 with return required in June. However, ALJs will only be required to come in on days on which they have hearings. The reports on the board indicate that there's still no agreement with the larger AFGE union that includes most non-ALJ personnel at Social Security.

A Question

      I have cases at the Appeals Council whose status is variously given in ERE as Assigned to Adjudicator, Assigned to Analyst and Case Workup. What is the difference? What can I tell from these case statuses? Anything?

Slow Progress In Obtaining And Analyzing Medical Records Via IT

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

Despite spending more than 10 years trying to increase the number of medical records received through health IT, SSA still receives most records in paper or ERE format. In the Fiscal Year (FY) that ended on September 30, 2020, SSA received only 11 percent of medical records through health IT. 

SSA experienced a decreasing trend in adding new health IT partners from 56 in FY 2018 to 12 in FY 2021 (as of August). During this time, SSA reduced the number of staff and contractors involved in health IT outreach and did not fully fund projects to increase electronic medical evidence. Also, expanding the number of health IT records by adding new partners is not a unilateral decision made by SSA, as prospective partners must be willing and able to meet SSA’s technical requirements, and COVID-19 was a factor. In October 2021, SSA informed us it was (a) working on Memorandums of Understanding with 3 entities to exchange health IT records with over 30 large health IT organizations and (b) adding more staff to develop and implement strategies to expand health IT.

Challenges in expanding the number of health IT records include some partners’ inability to send sensitive medical records, acceptance of SSA’s authorization form to release records to the Agency (Form SSA-827), and medical industry-wide differences in patient-identifying data fields. 

Additionally, SSA has had limited success analyzing medical records because MEGAHIT is limited to analyzing only structured data. MEGAHIT generated data extracts on only 7.3 percent of the 1.6 million health IT records SSA received in FY 2020. The extracts assist SSA disability examiners in making accurate disability determinations. Since 2018, SSA has been developing and testing the Intelligent Medical-Language Analysis GENeration application with new capabilities for reviewing medical records. As of August 2021, SSA was still testing and rolling out this application to its offices. ...

Supreme Court Opinion On Obscure Windfall Offset Issue

      From the syllabus of the Supreme Court's opinion in Babcock v. Kijakazi:

This case concerns retirement benefits due under the Social Security Act for a retired “military technician (dual status)" ... Like all dual-status technicians, Babcock was required to maintain membership in the National Guard. ... Upon retirement, Babcock applied to the Social Security Administration for benefits. The agency granted Babcock benefits but applied a statutory “windfall elimination provision” and reduced the amount of benefits to reflect Babcock’s receipt of civil-service pension payments for his work as a technician. ...

Held: Civil-service pension payments based on employment as a dual-status military technician are not payments based on “service as a member of a uniformed service” ...

     In other words, Babcock loses. Social Security will continue to apply the windfall offset to his Social Security benefits.

     While this seems like an obscure question to me, it probably affects at least hundreds of people, maybe thousands. That's the way it is with Social Security. It's so big that even tiny changes affect significant numbers of people.

It's A Bad Month To Be Trying To Do Business With Social Security

     January is usually a tough month for the Social Security Administration. There's a bit of hangover of work that didn't get done during the holidays but, more important, there's an increased workload because of the number of people who retire at the end of a calendar year and because SSA-1099s go out in January and their receipt occasions calls, not to mention those who call because they didn't receive an SSA-1099. All of this is still happening in January 2022 but Social Security faces more service delivery obstacles than usual. We still lack an appropriation for FY 2022 so the agency has little money to spend on overtime and the Omicron variant is causing a lot of employees absenteeism. All of this put together is a perfect storm that is causing horrific problems for anyone trying to do business with Social Security's field offices and teleservice centers. It's also likely to lead to little regular work getting done at the payment centers which get called upon to help the teleservice centers when they can't answer their phones.

Big Decline In Disability Claim Approvals Continues

      Social Security has posted final 2021 numbers on disability claims. Claims filed in 2021 went down slightly from 1,838,893 in 2020 to 1,820,282 in 2021 but there was a sharp 11.75% decline in the number of claims approved from 648,121 in 2020 to 571,952 in 2021. This is on top of a 10.46% decline in claims approved in 2020. Note that claims approved went down far faster than claims filed. The difference is vastly increased backlogs, mostly at the initial and reconsideration levels but also at the payment centers where favorable Title II decisions are implemented. The number of claimants in current payment went down 3.36% in 2021 from 8,151,016 in 2020 to 7,877,129 in 2021.

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Vaccine Mandate Compliance Rate Increases At Social Security While Suspensions Loom For Those Who Fail To Comply

     From The Hill:

Federal government agencies are preparing to take increasingly harsh steps against unvaccinated employees in order to implement President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers.  

Some agencies plan to send letters warning of possible suspensions to employees who have not complied with the mandate. Many are also prepared to fire employees who don’t follow the rule, though such moves would be further down the road. ...

The departments of Treasury, Transportation and Agriculture as well as the General Services Administration, Social Security Administration and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are all expected to begin suspending employees who are not complying with the mandate in the coming weeks. ...

Some agencies also saw success in convincing unvaccinated workers to get the shot toward the end of the year. The Social Security Administration, for instance, as of Friday had achieved a 98.9 percent compliance rate and a 91.5 vaccination rate, compared with a 95 percent compliance rate and 87.7 percent vaccination rate as of November.  ...

Is This A Good Idea Or Just Too Intrusive?

     From a posting by Social Security on SAM.com:

This is a Request for Information (RFI). This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation or commitment by the Government.  ...

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is conducting market research to identify potential vendors capable of providing record locator services to help identify interactions between a disability claimant and the healthcare system (e.g., physician visits, hospitalizations). ...

During the application process [for Social Security disability benefits], claimants may spend a great deal of time gathering information and trying to remember dates of medical treatment and provider details.  The process relies solely on claimant recall for the names and addresses of medical providers and dates of treatment.  As such, the body of medical evidence assembled for evaluation may be incomplete and omit information that could be critical in making an accurate determination of disability. ...

Technical Requirements:

• The service shall support the ability to accurately identify a patient based on key demographic information supplied by SSA, such as patient name, date of birth, gender, address, and Social Security number.
• The service shall support the ability to provide an encounter/treatment history within a specified timeframe for an identified patient, which consists of a list of treating facilities/providers, including address information, Medical Record Number (MRN), date of encounter, and conditions that were treated or evaluated.
• The service shall support the ability to provide a list of active medications within a specified timeframe for an identified patient, including the prescription date along with the prescribing doctor, facility, and address.
• The service shall support the ability to identify the electronic address of a specific patient’s electronic medical record based on key demographic information supplied by SSA.  ...
• The service shall support the ability to notify SSA when specific patients, identified by key demographic information supplied by SSA, have had medical encounters, and provide information about the treating provider or facility, the date of the encounter, and the electronic location of where the associated electronic medical record could be found.

      I really want for Social Security to have a complete medical record on my clients. I try hard to figure out who they've seen and to help complete the record set that Social Security has. Contrary to what some would think, the problem isn't claimants trying to conceal medical sources they've seen. I don't think that's what this RFI is even about. The problem is that medical histories get complicated and claimants forget. Still, this RFI seems a bit creepy to me. Do we really want the government to have the power to troll across all medical records to find every last bit of records on an individual? To be able to construct a list of prescribed medications at any given moment? Would you want the government having this kind of power to gather your medical records?

If Full Retirement Age Is Based Upon Life Expectancy, Shouldn’t It Go Down Now?

 

     

     To be clear, I think full retirement age should be considered a proxy for the physical infirmities that go along with increasing age rather than life expectancy. We should not be forcing older people to be filing disability claims when their health problems are just to be expected at their age. However, there are others, particularly on the right, who think that full retirement age and life expectancy should be linked, although I think that this stance has had more to do with hostility to the general concept of social security than anything else. Increasing life expectancy gave them an argument to do something they wanted to do anyway -- cut Social Security benefits.

What Do You Think?

bike trails

Two Members Of Congress Call For Improved Service At Social Security

      From a press release:

U.S. Rep. John Katko (R, NY-24) today called on the Social Security Administration (SSA) to provide information on the agency’s plans to improve access to essential services through the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. This effort comes amid continued disruptions to Social Security services due to the ongoing closure of SSA field offices in Central New York and across the country. Rep. Katko led this bipartisan effort alongside U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice (D, NY-4).

...Rep. Katko today urged SSA to provide requested information on its timeline for reopening Social Security field offices and expanding in-person appointments, as well as safety precautions the agency will take to protect staff and visitors during the pandemic. ...

 

About A 4% Market Share For Trajector

      Events at Myler Disability which is now a division of Trajector, are fascinating to people like me. That plus the lack of other news in the Social Security world has led me to post a good deal about Trajector this week. However, it's best to understand that while Myler's 2020 revenues were $48.48 million, the total Social Security attorney fees paid in 2020 were $1.08 billion, meaning that Myler only had about a 4% market share. Could a larger entity like Trajector expand that market share? Perhaps, but maybe most claimants prefer to have someone local represent them. Maybe most prefer to meet with their attorney prior to the date of their hearing.

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.