SSA Will Open New Call Center

Commissioner Astrue has announced on June 22, 2009 that Social Security will be opening a new phone center in Jackson, Tennessee. It has been 10 years since Social Security has opened a new call center. These call centers handle all of the calls that come in on SSA's toll-free number. The toll-free number is 1-800-772-1213. Anyone who has ever called this number looking for Social Security disability information knows how long it can take to get a hold of somebody to answer their questions about Social Security disability or other Social Security related questions. SSA presently has 35 of these call centers around the country. Clearly, Commissioner Astrue is spending a great deal of time and money on improving services within the Social Security administration. The baby boomer population and economic downturn have probably caused an increase in the number of calls coming into these call centers, so the opening of this new call center should help deal with that increase. My only concern is that they do not open the call center before they have a sufficiently trained staff knowledgeable in Social Security law. I say this because no information, or or having to wait longer for information, is better than wrong information. As is the case with the opening of any new operation, I am sure there will be some bumps in the road but overall it should be a positive step in getting the information to those who need it about Social Security and its benefits. The press release does not mention when this new call center will open. To see the full press release go to http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/NewTSC-pr.html . And for more Social Security disability information visit my website.

Should you list obesity on your SSDI application?

I was at the airport today waiting for my delayed flight when I heard on the TV monitor above me a piece on one of the major news networks about whether or not obesity should be considered a disability. I listened to the segment and viewer comments that were posted by e-mail. This led me to decide to write a blog on this subject and how it applies to Social Security disability. Obesity is no longer on the medical listing of impairments for Social Security disability. Years ago, if you were a certain height and weight you could meet a listing and be granted disability on this basis. This is no longer the case. This does not mean that obesity is not considered in a Social Security disability claim. Social Security is supposed to look at the effect obesity would have on your other medical conditions. In other words, if you have a back impairment and you are obese Social Security is supposed to consider the impact your obesity has on your back condition and the limitations on your functional abilities it causes. So as you can see, even though obesity no longer has a listing it can still have an impact on your disability claim. So if you are obese and applying for Social Security disability benefits you should still list this as one of your disabling impairments. Many people who suffer from severe obesity go through great measures including surgery to try and reduce their weight. Many of these procedures for obesity have serious side effects and many times can impact the entire body and make you more disabled even if you lose weight as a result of the surgery. I have had many cases of people who have had surgical procedures to reduce their obesity and as a result of these procedures and the side effects had then become disabled. The purpose of this post is to not argue one way or the other whether obesity should be considered a disability in and of itself. I am writing this to inform those who suffer from obesity that it can have an impact on their disability claim. Anyone who suffers from obesity does not need me to tell them that there will always be those who feel obesity is the fault of the individual and should not be considered in determining disability. However, Social Security's rules clearly state obesity should be considered when determining if someone is disabled.

SSA Commissioner Receives Award.

Commissioner Astrue received the public health leadership reward from the National Organization of Rare Disorders. The commissioner's implementation of the compassionate allowance in social security disability claims and, other initiatives to shorten the amount of time people with disabilities have to wait to get a decision, appears to be one of the reasons he was given this award. The compassionate allowance allows people with certain medical conditions to be granted disability much quicker. If a person has a medical diagnosis on a list of about 50 conditions than they are automatically granted disability. I have written on the subject before. Commissioner Astrue in a short time as the head of the Social Security Administration has continually pushed for programs and technologies to speed up the process. I would like to congratulate the Commissioner, because since he was put in charge there has clearly been a focus on decreasing the backlog of disability claims. This is an uphill battle for sure, because of the increasing claims due to the economy and baby boomer generation. However, without his leadership the backlogs may have become even longer and it appears they have atleast stabilized. I hope the commissioner continues to explore new ways to decrease the time it takes to get a decision for those applying for Social Security disability benefits. If his record is any indication, then we can look forward to continued improvement in the Social Security disability process. The National Organization of Rare Disorders also played a key part in the development of the compassionate allowance initiative. Click here for the SSA official press release. For more up to date Social Security Disability information visit my Ultimate Disability Guide website.

Social Security Disability Hearing: How to Prepare to Win.

If you are not represented by a lawyer and your hearing is scheduled it is a good idea to make sure you get a copy of your file from Social Security and review it. Most files today are on a disk. When your hearing is scheduled you are supposed to receive a copy of your file with this hearing notice. If you did not receive a copy of your file you should contact the hearing office (ODAR) and request it. When you put the disc in your computer there is instructions on how to view your file. You will want to look at the exhibit list index. The most important section of the disc is known as the F section. This is where all your medical evidence is kept. You should review this section and make sure that all of your medical records have been received by Social Security. If you find there is evidence not in the file you should do all you can to get the evidence submitted to Social Security before your hearing. This will also be your first opportunity to see what the Social Security doctors and employees have said about your condition and your limitations from those conditions. You will also want to make sure there is opinions from your own doctors of your limitations from your medical conditions. Before your hearing you should take notes of what each F exhibit contains. Each medical document is given an exhibit number such as 1F, 2F and so on. If you have notes on what each of these exhibits contain you can refer to them by the exhibit number so the ALJ will know exactly what exhibit you are referring to. You may want to point out at the end of the hearing which exhibits are particularly helpful in showing you are disabled. This does take some skill, and knowledge of how Social Security determines if you are disabled. If you have read my Social Security disability website and the SSA website and studied them as it pertains to your particular case and feel you are knowledgeable enough to be able to make your arguments at the hearing, then you may be able to do this yourself. However, you have waited a long time for this hearing and you do not want to waste this opportunity to win your case. So, if you have any doubt about your ability to handle your own case at the hearing level it would be a good idea to get a lawyer at this point to do this for you. Even if you are comfortable with your ability, knowledge of your case, and the law chances are an experienced Social Security disability lawyer who has handled many disability hearings will be able to do a better job of presenting your case at a hearing. If there is a medical expert or vocational expert at your hearing this will make the hearing even more complicated. Knowing your file inside and out will be needed to have the ability to cross examine the vocational expert and medical expert if needed. Medical experts will give a summary of your medical history. They will also give their opinion as to whether or not you meet or equal any of the listed impairments. They may also be asked to give their opinion of your limitations from your medical conditions in their particular specialty. The vocational experts job at the hearing, is to give a summary of your work history and classify those jobs as to what exertional level they were performed at and the skills required to do those jobs. They will also give an opinion as to whether or not any of the skills are transferable to other types of work. The judge will also ask hypothetical questions based on the medical evidence in the file and what your file shows your limitations are. The vocational expert will then give an opinion as to whether you can perform your prior work based on that hypothetical. The vocational expert may also be asked to give an opinion if there is any other work that could be performed based on the limitations in the hypothetical. If the VE finds there is other work based on the hypothetical he or she will then give an estimation of the number of jobs available in both the local and national economy. The key to a hearing with experts is to know what questions to ask and sometimes when not to ask questions. Hearings with experts are best handled by lawyers with extensive experience in dealing with them. A Social Security disability lawyer will know how to use the evidence in the file to cross examine these experts if their testimony is unfavorable to you. This is one area where I find it particularly difficult to try and explain to a claimant without a lawyer how to handle this type of hearing. No matter what I tell you it cannot make up for three years of law school and many years of dealing with these types of cases. So if you know experts are going to be at your hearing it would be a good idea to consider a lawyer at this point. I try to provide as much information as possible on my websites and blogs, but sometimes you can make up for experience in handling certain situations that arise in a SSDI or SSI claim. Your hearing notice will say what if any experts will be at your hearing.

Are Social Security Disability Hearing Backlogs Being Reduced?

As of March 2009 Social Security has had a drop in the number of disability hearings pending for three straight months. However, the number of applicants requesting a hearing has increased this year. The probable culprit is the lagging economy and baby boomer generation. This year the number of hearing requests is up 10% compared to last year. More bad news, there is also an increase in cases at the lower levels compared to last year by about the same 10%. The majority of these cases at the lower level will begin to reach the hearing stage soon. This will cause increased pressure and backlog at the Social Security hearing offices. Now back to some good news. There is 90 more administrative law judges then there was last year. It has also been reported that the ALJ's have increased their production of hearing decisions. There has also been an increase in hearing decisions decided by attorney advisers before they are assigned to a judge. Unfortunately, I have more bad news to report. Although SSA statistics are showing that more hearings are being held, there appears to be a slowdown between the time of the hearing until the claimant gets the decision. One cause of this problem appears to be that there is a decrease in the number of decision writers compared to last year. The result of all this when factored together appears to be keeping the processing times about the same as they were a year ago at the hearing stage. From the time you request a hearing until you get a decision it still averages around 500 days. So although SSA should be commended on its efforts to reduce the backlog it appears the increase in cases is thwarting its efforts to do so. At least, the backlog does not appear to be getting any worse. This is of little comfort to those who have to wait for a hearing. This information was obtained from the NOSSCR Forum dated April 2009 and from SSA's official statistics.

Efforts to Reduce Social Security Disability Hearing Wait Times

Anyone with a Social Security disability claim and the lawyers that help them all know that it takes way too long to get a hearing. The good news, is that as part of the stimulus package the Social Security Administration will be receiving additional funds to open new hearing offices and hire additional employees including administrative law judges. The increase funding should also help with SSDI and SSI claims at the lower levels as well. SSA also plans to hire a substantial amount of new employees to handle the application reconsideration levels as well. Social Security is expected to hire at least 7000 new employees by September of 2009. The most significant backlog is still at the hearing level and this appears to be where the emphasis is being placed. There is plans to open 13 new hearing offices. The Social Security Administration has already opened two new National Hearing Centers, one in Falls Church, Virginia and the other in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These NHC will handle cases by video hearing for the most backlogged ODAR offices. There is also plans to open two new NHC's one in Chicago, Illinois and one in Baltimore, Maryland. The 13 new hearing offices are to be opened in Phoenix Arizona, St. Petersburg Florida, Tallahassee Florida, Atlanta South Georgia, Danville or Portage Indiana, Topeka Kansas, Livonia Michigan, Mount Pleasant Michigan, Fayetteville North Carolina, Akron Ohio, Toledo Ohio, Auburn Washington, and Madison Wisconsin. Although this is good news, because on paper it looks like this should certainly help those waiting for Social Security disability hearings, but it is still difficult to tell how big an impact it will have given the sharp increase in disability hearing requests, as a result of the baby boom generation and the failing economy. Hopefully, the opening of these new offices and the other initiatives taken by the Social Security Administration will have a significant impact on reducing the wait times for disabled claimants waiting for a hearing. If you want to see how long it takes to get a hearing and then a decision in your particular state visit my website. For more information on Social Security disability hearings and what happens at that those hearings you can find this information on my website as well.

Plan to eliminate backlogs for SSDI and SSI hearings.

The Social Security Administration under Commissioner Astrue has announced its strategic goal for eliminating hearings backlog and preventing its recurrence. It stated goals are to reduce the number of pending hearings to 466,000 by fiscal year 2013. Reduce the time it takes an individual to receive a hearing decision to an average of 270 days. Increase productivity by automating labor-intensive tasks necessary to issue a hearing decision and establish standardized electronic hearings business processes.

Presently over 750,000 individuals are waiting for a hearing on their disability applications. The average wait time for individual at the hearing stage for Social Security disability benefits is 500 days to receive a decision. This wait time is clearly unacceptable for those who are disabled and have no income and have to wait 500 days to get a decision. It is good to see that the Social Security Administration is putting a great deal of time, effort, and money into the problem. The SSA plan to reduce this backlog includes increased funding to employ new workers and upgrade technology.

Their first objective is to increase capacity to hear and decide cases. They plan to do this by increasing the number of ALJ's and support staff at the hearing level. They also plan to screen hearing request to quickly identify possible allowances before hearing is even scheduled. They also plan to increase the use of video hearings and make use of SSA's two new National Hearing Centers. These National Hearing Centers were set up to help reduce severely backlog hearing offices by conducting hearings from the centers by video conference.

SSA's second objective is to improve their workload management practices throughout the hearing process. They plan to do this by streamlining and automating case tasks. This will be done by the increased use of software technology. Also part of his plan is to eliminate temporary hearing sites. In my opinion, this may help reduce costs and efficiency within the Social Security Administration, however, it will cause additional burden on claimants who may have to travel further for their hearings. They also plan to establish standardized electronic hearing business processes. This again appears to rely heavily on the usage of new technologies. They also plan to prevent unintended backlogs. The effort here appears to be based on reducing the amount of time it takes for the Appeals Council to review hearing decisions.

It will be interesting to see if social security is able to reach its goals but at the very least it at least appears like they have a feasible plan in place to help reduce the backlogs. From my experience the past year has shown a sharp increase in the number of cases decided before a hearing is even scheduled. This alone should help in reducing the wait times for claimants at the hearing stage for their Social Security Disability claims. There was one thing not specifically mentioned in the report and that is, that soon lawyers will be able to access their files at the hearing level over the Internet. I am a part of a pilot program and I am presently using that system. I believe this too will have a significant impact on reducing the backlog because cases will be better prepared so that a proper determination can be made at the hearing level. The earlier a lawyer is able to access his clients files, then the earlier he can see what is in the file and what is missing. A lawyer can then help identify cases that should be decided favorably without a hearing by sending in a pre-hearing brief. I have been handling Social Security disability cases for many years and I can honestly say that SSA has made significant strides in improving the process. The only question is whether it will be enough to reduce backlogs given the sharp increase in cases due to the baby boomer population and the struggling economy.
For more information on Social Security's new initiatives see http://www.ssa.gov/asp/index.htm

For more information on Social Security Disability Hearings see my website page on what you can expect when you finally do get a hearing.