NAMI And ARC And Disability Policy Collaboration On Social Security Budget

Nearly identical press releases from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) and Disability Policy Collaboration:

People with mental illness who apply for Social Security disability benefits (SSDI) or for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits are currently waiting longer and longer for decisions on eligibility. This is especially the case for claimants that are forced to file appeals to overturn a denial of benefits to which they are entitled.

As revealed in Congressional hearings and news articles, some people have lost their homes and families while they wait for decisions. Others use up all their resources and cannot afford critical medications and treatments, resulting in increased disability and even death. In some places, the wait is almost 900 days, or almost two and one-half more years!

Insufficient funding has also resulted in other reduced services, including delays in processing earnings reports and the inability to respond to reports of lost checks or answer questions from beneficiaries or the public.

The problem has reached crisis proportions and will continue to get worse for people with disabilities. The President’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2008 indicates that average waiting times will continue to grow, even if the Social Security Administration (SSA) is funded at the level of his request ($9.6 billion).

The solution is simple: the SSA must be given enough funding to get disability decisions made in a timely manner. As required by law, the Commissioner of Social Security submitted a budget request separate from the President’s request. This request indicates that the agency needs $10.44 billion in administrative funding for FY 2008 for its administrative expenses, known as SSA’s Limitation on Administrative Expenses (LAE). This is almost $1 billion more than the President requested.

Action on the FY 2008 budget has already begun. If SSA is going to receive the funds it needs to reduce the backlogs of disability decisions and improve other services, it is imperative that the House and Senate Budget Committees include enough funding for SSA in the FY 2008 Budget Resolution. The House and Senate Budget Committees will mark up their Budget Resolutions in early to mid March.

Action Needed

Contact your representatives in the House and Senate and urge them to contact the leadership of the House and Senate Budget Committees to encourage them to authorize additional resources for the Social Security Administration (SSA) under the Limitation on Administrative Expenses (LAE). This funding is vital to reducing the backlog of Social Security claims and speeding up response time.

It is important that every Member of Congress urge the Chairman of their respective Budget Committee to include sufficient funding in the Budget Resolution to appropriate funds for SSA’s Limitation on Administrative Expenses at the level requested by the Commissioner of SSA: $10.44 billion for FY 2008.

At Least Part Of DSI About To Be Terminated?

On January 19, Social Security solicited proposals from potential contractors to develop a "profiling/screening tool (software) for identifying Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) disability decisions that are likely to be appealed to federal district court and remanded or reversed by the court." This was Request for Proposal SSA-RFP-07-1011.

This would be an essential part of former Commissioner Barnhart's Disability Service Improvement (DSI) plan. DSI had been criticized on the grounds that removing Appeals Council review would swamp the District Courts with Social Security civil actions. To respond to this criticism, Barnhart came up with the idea of the "profiling/screening tool" that would allow cases that would be appealed and reversed to be identified and dealt with by the Decision Review Board.

Social Security posted this late yesterday:

Request for Proposal SSA-RFP-07-1011 is hereby cancelled in its entirety.

Basis: The agency no longer requires the solicited services.

One possibility is that Social Security has decided that it can produce the necessary software in-house. Another possibility is that Social Security thinks it can somehow get by without the "profiling/screening tool" or wants to delay its procurement. The more likely possibility is that the DSI plan to terminate the Appeals Council is being abandoned which means that all of DSI is in serious trouble.

Hearing Backlog Ideas That Can Be Implemented Quickly -- Installment II

Re-start re-recon and senior attorney decisions

Re-recon was never Social Security's term, but no one remembers what term Social Security was using. Re-recon was the term most people were using. When re-recon was last used, during the Clinton Administration, once a Social Security disability claimant was denied at the reconsideration (often called "recon") level and asked for a hearing, the case was quickly examined to see if it fit into one of several categories of cases that were frequently allowed by Administrative law Judges (ALJs). If the case fit into one of these categories, such as claimants over 55 or claimants suffering from chronic mental illness, the case was diverted to one of several special units where it was reviewed to see if the claim should be approved. The review was something like a new reconsideration review, hence the term re-recon. The re-recon review was done quickly. If the claim was approved, the case was over and done with in a month or two without any ALJ ever having to look at the file. If the case could not be approved at re-recon, the file was sent on for a hearing, with no delay for the claimant. I would give a guess that re-starting re-recon could reduce the number of cases requiring ALJ review by around 5% and the vast majority of the cases would have been approved by ALJs anyway. Social Security should have statistics showing what effect this had the last time it was done. This could be implemented in about six months to a year, without the need for new regulations.

Senior attorney decisions could be implemented more quickly since those personnel are already in place. Once case files reach ODAR, which is the office where ALJs work, they are routinely reviewed to see if the case can be approved without the need for a hearing. These are called on the record reversals, or ORRs or OTRs. Usually, it is a staff person rather than an ALJ, who does the ORR initial review at ODAR. Once a staff person identifies a case that he or she thinks is a good candidate for ORR, he or she must get an ALJ to sign off on the ORR. Most of the time the ALJ does agree with the ORR, but there are some ALJs who seem to believe that virtually no case is appropriate for ORR and some other ALJs seem unwilling to take the time to review these case files, which may not be as unreasonable as it might sound when you consider ALJ workloads. In the senior attorney program, which was also employed during the Clinton Administration, Social Security's senior attorneys reviewed case files for potential ORRs, much the same as now, but instead of taking potential ORRs to an ALJ for action, the senior attorney was able to take action on his or her own to approve the claim. Like re-recon this can be criticized as paying down the backlog, but the vast majority of the time these claims would be approved by ALJs later anyway. ALJs do not like senior attorney decisions because they feel it reduces their status. Under the circumstances neither objection seems important. My estimate is that re-starting the senior attorney program would reduce the number of cases requiring ALJ hearings by 5-10%. Again, Social Security should have numbers showing what the results were the last time this was done.

The problem with restarting the senior attorney program is that the regulations which allowed senior attorney decisions have lapsed, meaning that an official re-start of the program would require new regulations which would require the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which could take months, but the re-recon regulations are still on the books. There is nothing in those regulations that prevents the re-recon regulations from being used as authority for senior attorney decisions. Using this authority the senior attorney program could be restarted in less than three months, although, again, the complaints about it would continue for years.

Hearing Backlog Ideas That Can Be Implemented Quickly -- Installment I

The only real solution for Social Security's humongous hearing backlog is many more warm bodies to get the work done. That will happen, but not immediately. There are some things that can be done now, however that will help to some extent. I had posted these ideas earlier in a very long post. I thought I ought to split it up into bite sized chunks. Here is the first installment

Hold hearings on cases without "pulling" exhibits

When case files come into ODAR, they are a mess. There are duplicate copies of medical records. Medical records may have been requested from a single provider on several occasions, meaning that the records from that provider are spread out at several places in the file. Even when all of the records from a single provider are in one place, they may not be in chronological order. Even if they are in chronological order, the order will go forward in one set of records and backwards in another. The files are jumbles. A staff member "pulls" out the relevant medical evidence and places it in some order. The exhibits are marked with numbers. This is extremely helpful for all involved and should never be abandoned permanently. However, staff shortages have made pulling exhibits a bottleneck. Many ALJs would like to hold more hearings but cannot because files have not been "pulled."

Some hearing offices have abandoned "pulling" exhibits as a general matter. The exhibits are "pulled" only if a claim is to be denied. This is inconvenient for all concerned and can lead to confusion and misunderstandings, but there is no doubt that it improves productivity. Social Security seems to have no fixed policy on this. My opinion is that instructing ALJs to hold hearings routinely on unpulled files would improve ODAR productivity by at least 10%. This is a temporary expedient that should be abandoned quickly after the crisis is over. This could probably be implemented in less than three months, although the complaints about it would continue for years after it was over.

Buffalo News Editorial On Backlogs

The Buffalo News has an editorial on Social Security backlogs. The article is only available online to subscribers or to those who pay a fairly ridiculous fee. Here are a couple of excerpts for free:

If you have been disabled and are applying for Social Security Disability benefits, don’t count on a quick resolution of your claim. In the Buffalo and Rochester regions, once a claimant has been denied on an initial application, it may take as long as 22 to 26 months before a SSD or SSI hearing is held. ...

Congress needs to wake up to the fact that the SSD processing delays can have devastating effects upon claimants who, like our clients, dutifully paid into the Social Security system for years and are now desperately in need of benefits. People’s lives are at stake.

It’s time for our elected officials to act. It’s time to remove the hiring freeze. It’s time to gear up the review offices and speed up the hearing process. It’s time to ensure that our citizens are justly protected by the SSD safety net. For justice delayed is justice denied.

SSA Now Has White House Liaison

The current organizational structure of Social Security shows Larry Dye as "White House Liaison." According to the Wayback Machine (and yes, there is such a thing), there was no such position when Jo Anne Barnhart was Commissioner, or for that matter when Larry Massanari was Acting Commissioner. Dye was Chief of Staff for Barnhart.

Why does Social Security need a White House Liaison?

NCSSMA On Staffing

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel has written Linda McMahon, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations about staffing problems. The letter is worth reproducing here in full:

Dear Linda,

As you may know, we are in the process of tabulating the results from the 2007 NCSSMA Survey of Management. The resounding theme I am seeing is that staffing on the front lines is the number one issue of field and TSC management staff across the country. Over the past year, feedback has evolved from subtle messages about staffing and service concerns to strong demands from members that NCSSMA must try to do something to address the deterioration of service in the field and TSC's.

We are most concerned about the significant resource losses in field offices since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2006. FO’s have lost over 1,700 CR and SR positions and in this fiscal year alone, there has been a loss of about 700 in these two positions. The Field has 1,270 fewer positions now compared to the beginning of FY 2005, which was before we did special hiring for Part D Medicare. Losses in these critical positions are significantly more than the average losses for the entire Agency. The Field and TSC’s [Teleservice Centers] have lost had nearly two-thirds of the FTE [Full Time Equivalent] losses in the Agency since the beginning of the Fiscal Year while they only represent about 52% of the Agency’s staffing. (Note Area Offices are included in this percent.) Offices across the country are finding it very difficult to provide a full level of service.

We can clearly see this from the survey results and overwhelming feedback coming in from the Survey of Management. The results of this survey will be published soon. Here are three examples of comments that are typical of the feedback we received:

■ “We have lost 20% of our staff over the last several months with little hope of replacing them. A once happy, productive and successful office now has morale sinking to an all time low. Management staff is doing all the clerical work and is taking over more and more production workloads just to keep things moving and try to keep staff morale from hitting rock bottom. Bright, hardworking employees are finding work elsewhere.

As a manager, I find it very frustrating. I can’t hire. I can’t reduce workloads. I can’t even adequately reward staff members for their hard work.

We have management staff trying to answer the general phone lines all day long, which is impossible with all the clerical and production tasks we are trying to cover in addition to management duties.”

■ “It is discouraging to keep being asked to do more with less and embarrassing to see the service you provide erode before your very eyes. Although we manage to keep our head above water, the constant interviewing and long lines of people waiting to be seen is also impacting our staff. Even my most energetic staff members seem to be demoralized and anxious wanting to take care of their workloads and dealing with irate visitors who want to know what’s taking so long to clear their cases.”

■ “We have not been able to replace our losses, resulting in very poor telephone service answering in FO’s. Our reception area is standing room only because callers cannot get through on the telephones.”

Most offices are not doing an adequate job of answering telephone calls, and waiting times are climbing. As we continue to refine and promote our internet services, the need for skilled interviewers to assist the online filers is increasing. This additional task is falling on the already burdened shoulders of our front-line employees. As the recent hearings on disability backlogs graphically illustrated, the Congress has a strongly held interest in public service issues. We would hope that the steady deterioration of field office resources be remedied before we too are subject to such outside scrutiny.

We recognize that the Agency’s budget is very tight this year and that next year’s budget could also be very bleak. We helped advocate for the funds that are available this fiscal year and well understand that the ability to hire new CR’s and SR’s will be limited. However, now is the time to reprioritize within the Social Security Administration - the status quo is not acceptable nor fair to the public we serve. We firmly believe that there needs to be an Agency wide focus on providing more resources and support to critically shorthanded Field Offices and on increasing the number of interviewing positions.

We do believe that we need to slow down the trend of assigning CR’s [Claims Representatives] to non-interviewing positions such as SDW [Special Disability Workload -- too complicated to explain here] cadre. We need a commitment to increase the number of interviewers and slow down the growth of staff components. Although we agree that the Regional Offices play an important role, we note the Regional Offices have grown in staff in the past few years despite the losses we’ve seen in field offices and TSC’s.

Perhaps a special workgroup can be formed soon to come up with a plan on how to best address these losses. We certainly would be willing to provide our assistance in any such workgroup. We do believe that a concerted effort needs to be made immediately to look at this issue. We sincerely want to be part of developing the solutions needed to address the staffing and service issues that we are facing in the field and TSC's.

Sincerely,

/s/

Rick Warsinskey

NCAA Challenge -- Still Time To Join

The Social Security News NCAA Challenge will close at noon on Thursday, when the NCAA basketball tournament begins. There is no prize other than public recognition for your basketball knowledge. Fedblog says that office pools are non-existent in the federal sector, so where else are you going to compare your picking ability with others.

The name of the group is Social Security News and it is on ESPN Tournament Challenge. It is a public group, so anyone can join.