Can't Get Through In Fort Worth

From the Fort Worth, Texas Star Telegram:

With his 65th birthday approaching, Eric Martin of Arlington knew it was time to sign up for Medicare. Thirty phone calls, countless busy signals and an office visit later, he still couldn’t get the help he needed. ...

To get the ball rolling, Martin had called a national toll-free number listed on a document he received in the mail from the Social Security Administration. He was then given the phone number to its Mid-Cities field office in Grand Prairie.

That’s when the process ground to a halt.

Martin began calling the during the first week of September, with no luck.

By Sept. 24, Martin said, he had called about 30 times without getting through. So he went to the office, only to find it packed with people waiting to be seen. One person was being helped every 30 minutes, he said. By his calculation, that meant he would not be seen until the next day. ...

Nationally, more than 3 million people had a wait of more than an hour at field offices, the GAO [Government Accountability Office] said, citing the Social Security Administration but noting that it had not validated its data.

GAO also reported that more than half the people who call field offices get busy signals. ...

An employee there who would identify herself only as Miss Rojas told the Star-Telegram that the number of workers tending the phones depends on the line of people inside the building.

But Charlie Brittian, project manager for the administration’s Regional Public Affairs team, has a different take.

"We answer the phone all day long," she said and noted that the Mid-Cities office has 52 employees.

She said Martin’s experience is not common at the Mid-Cities office. The average wait time this year for individuals without appointments, like Martin, has been 35.6 minutes, Brittian said. Individuals with appointments averaged a wait of 4.8 minutes, she said.

Brittian also said the Mid-Cities office has a policy of returning calls that day, or, if necessary, the next morning.

Martin disagreed.

"That’s stupid," he said. "You don’t even get a recording, so how can they call back?"

I have said it before. We will know that Social Security field offices are adequately staffed when they are able to dispense with secret telephone numbers which are supposed to be used only by family and friends of Social Security employees and by higher ups at Social Security who need to reach the office by telephone. Contrary to the opinion of many Social Security field office employees this is not a normal situation. Few businesses need private numbers like this so.

New Forum For Social Security Disability Claimants

Allsup, which represents Social Security disability claimants mostly on behalf of long term disability insurers but which is also seeking individual cases, has just started a web forum for Social Security disability claimants.

Improper Payments Info To Become More Visible

From Government Executive:

Federal agencies soon will be required to create dashboards on their Web sites tracking the amount of money they have spent on improper payments, under a new directive from President Obama.

The executive order -- which Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag previewed last week -- is aimed at increasing the transparency and public scrutiny of payments to beneficiaries of federal programs, contractors, grant recipients and other entities.

Chairman Of Social Security Subcommittee To Retire

Representative John Tanner, the Chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, has decided not to seek re-election in 2010. Tanner is one of the founders of the Blue Dog coalition.

Swamped

From Federal Times:

The Social Security Administration has been working for years to reduce its backlog of disability claims, which now stands at 780,000 claims. It even hired and trained 8,600 new employees last fiscal year.

But any progress it made has come to an abrupt halt. Largely because of the recession, Americans filed 400,000 more disability claims than predicted last year and the agency expects 700,000 more to be filed this year than in 2008.

SSA is not alone. Agencies across government that provide federal assistance are seeing their workloads explode as Americans seek unemployment insurance payments, health care insurance, school lunches, food stamps and college loans. Benefit claims and payouts have jumped in the last year at assistance programs run by the Labor, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services departments, among others.

One Down

From EM-09078 issued by Social Security last Friday:

Republic Bank and Trust (RBT) has notified SSA that it is discontinuing its Currency Connection Direct Deposit program. The program solicited SSA beneficiaries to have their payments deposited into an RBT master account, then distributed to various sub-accounts (check cashing services or other businesses). SSA has approximately 50,000 Title II and Title XVI beneficiaries that need to make alternative payment arrangements based on this change.

Now, if we could get rid of Allsup's ability to "Withdraw overpayment funds directly from claimant’s bank account using our patented electronic process."

New Office In NC

From the Raleigh News and Observer:

The Social Security Administration will employ about 200 people at a new site in Research Triangle Park [North Carolina] that will act as the agency's headquarters in the Durham area.

Highwoods Properties announced last week that the SSA had leased 68,000 square feet of office space in its Pamlico office building. ...

A spokesperson for the SSA said the agency has been hiring people for the headquarters since 2008 and will continue to fill positions locally and through relocations. The RTP office will provide IT and administrative services for the SSA.

This is in my backyard. This sounds awfully large for an area supervisor office, but maybe I don't know just how big those are. Can anyone enlighten me as to what this is for?

Department Of Justice?

From American Medical News:

After what it called a successful year testing the National Health Information Network with select hospital systems and regional health information exchanges, the Social Security Administration said its next step will be to exchange data with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs and the Dept. of Justice. ...

The exchange would be an extension to earlier testing the SSA did with MedVirginia, a regional health information organization serving Virginia, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Jim Borland, special adviser for health information technology for the SSA, said in June that since the exchange with MedVirginia started in February, the organization reduced the average time it takes to process disability applications from 83 to 32 days. In some cases, applications were received and processed the same day.