NCSSMA President On Social Security Funding

Richard Warsinskey, the President of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of management personnel, has written a commentary in the Federal Times on Social Security's backlogs and the agency's need for more funding and more personnel. Let me excerpt one paragraph:

SSA will lose about 4,000 positions from the beginning of fiscal 2006 to the end of fiscal 2007. This will leave the agency at its lowest level of staffing since the early 1970s, which is before SSA took over the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The largest proportion of these losses has been in the field — nearly 2,500 positions.

NPRM ON QDD

Social Security has published the Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) on Quick Disability Determinations (QDD). The NPRM would remove the 20 day time limit on making QDDs and take QDDs out of special units in the experiment that had been underway in the Boston region. In other words, QDDs will identical to the process which has been in place since forever for placing the most seriously disabled on benefits very quickly. This NPRM is completely meaningless for any part of the country other than the Boston region and has almost no meaning for that region.

Press Release On QDD

A press release from Social Security:

Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, today announced that Social Security will publish a proposed regulation to extend the quick disability determination (QDD) process to all State disability determination services. The process is now operating in the Boston region, comprised of the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Under QDD, a predictive model analyzes specific elements of data within the electronic claims file to identify claims where there is a high potential that the claimant is disabled and where evidence of the claimant’s allegations can be quickly and easily obtained.

“At my confirmation hearing, I promised to look closely at the disability changes we were testing in New England and implement nationally those things that were working well,” Commissioner Astrue said. “We have seen the success of the QDD model in identifying cases that are most likely to be allowed. To date, 97 percent of the cases identified have been decided within 21 days and the average decision time is 11 days. We plan to build on the success of QDD by expanding it to all States because it is both efficient and compassionate for us to do so.”

Social Security currently receives more than 2.5 million new disability cases each year. In the Boston region, QDD cases constituted slightly less than 3 percent of all new cases because the model does not yet cull a wide enough variety of diseases. Commissioner Astrue has committed to expanding the number of cases that can be decided through the model as high as possible while maintaining accuracy.

“The length of time many people wait for a disability decision is unacceptable,” Astrue said. “I am committed to a process that is as fair and speedy as possible. While there is no single magic bullet, with better systems, better business processes and better ways of fast-tracking targeted cases, we can greatly improve the service we provide this vulnerable population.”

The proposed regulation provides for a 30 day comment period. It is on display at the Federal Register today and, starting tomorrow, can be read online at www.regulations.gov. For more information about Social Security’s disability programs, go to www.socialsecurity.gov

I am still waiting for someone to tell me how this is really different from what has been going on for years.

It's Official: House Appropriations Committee Markup On Social Security On Wednesday

The House Appropriations Committee website is now showing the full committee markup on the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which includes Social Security, to be on Wednesday, July 11 at 10:00. It will be available on webcast.

Federal Register Alert

This is the entire text of an advance notification that the Social Security Administration will publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register tomorrow:

PROPOSED RULES

Social security benefits and supplemental security income:

Federal old age, survivors, and disability insurance and aged, blind, and disabled--

Quick disability determination process, E7-13288 [0032]

House Appropriations To Markup Social Security Funding On Wednesday

The National Journal is reporting that the House Appropriations Committee will be marking up the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill on Wednesday, July 11. (You cannot read this on the National Journal website. However, you can sign up for a free trial of National Journal, which I did. Subscribing to National Journal runs to about $3,000 per year!) The Labor-HHS Appropriations bill includes Social Security. However, the National Journal also reports that the appropriations process for the upcoming fiscal year may end with in one huge omnibus appropriations bill for all agencies.

An Image From The Pre-History Of Social Security In the U.S.

HALLEX Updated

I posted recently that Social Security's Hearings Appeals and Litigation (HALLEX) Manual had not been updated in the last year. I do not think it happened because of what I posted, but they have just updated HALLEX. The update is not what I would call important. Here is Social Security's summary:

I-5-1-17I and I-5-17II have been updated to remove language, no longer needed since the bench decision is not a process.

I-5-1-17III contains new instructions on completing a bench decision using the Findings Integrated Template (FIT) format, which will become available in the June 2007 FIT release. The text changes are minor and mirror the process for creating a FIT decision.

I-5-1-17V adds the requirement to store digital recordings for all bench decisions rendered for EDCS claims.

I-5-1-17 Attachment 2 includes the new checksheet, which mirrors much of the content in the previous one but makes it available in the FIT format.