The Tough, Necessary Work to Reduce Disability Wait Times
Reading Time: 3 MinutesLast Updated: September 6, 2024
We strive to provide the high level of service our customers expect and deserve, but it still takes too long for the Social Security Administration and state-level Disability Determination Services offices to make initial decisions for those applying for disability benefits.
As part of determining whether an applicant is eligible, SSA provides DDS offices with the resources and technologies needed to make medical determinations. Unfortunately, despite a record high number of customers, SSA is facing significant underfunding, leaving too many DDS offices understaffed and behind schedule.
Consider this: As recently as 2018, SSA’s operating budget represented 1.2% of the annual benefits it pays, an overhead rate much lower than insurance companies. At that time, DDS offices could make an initial determination, on average, in less than four months. Today, though, SSA’s budget has shrunk to 0.94% of annual benefits, leading to challenges such as hiring and keeping state-level staff at DDS offices. As a result, turnaround times on initial determinations have roughly doubled. We want to work with Congress to secure the increases in the President’s 2025 budget, which is a big step in the right direction to help SSA to improve service levels and reduce wait times.
In total, over the past four years, Congress has funded SSA’s operating costs at a level almost $3 billion below budget requests. This underfunding – which began in 2018 – led to an increase in pending disability claims by 94%, a processing backlog jump of 60%, and a tripling in the time it takes to answer calls on our 800-number.
That’s why, since joining SSA nine months ago, I have made reducing disability processing times one of the agency’s top three customer service priorities. We’ve brought together agency’s top executive team every two weeks to deeply explore all available policies and tools that could stretch existing resources and address disability processing times within legal and regulatory constraints. The agency has also for the first time provided transparency on backlogs on a state-by-state basis.
So far, the agency this year has:
- Deployed teams from SSA to help DDS offices in states in greatest need of help
- Established partnerships with DDS offices with low attrition rates and high performance to help other states
- Expanded the national pool of medical consultants to help DDS offices with case reviews
- Reduced the “lookback” period (from 15 years to 5 years) that applicants must provide and decision-makers must consider regarding past relevant work experience of an applicant
- Enacted a change that allows the DDS office and beneficiaries to use a medical decision from a previous SSA disability program (SSDI or SSI) to also be acceptable for DDS decision-making
- Increased the use of a new platform – called IMAGEN – that quickly analyzes claimant’s medical records to help DDS offices make adjudications. More than half of cases now use this platform, double the rate from a year ago.
The agency also continues to prioritize applicants with the most severe disabilities and/or terminal conditions in order to provide them benefits as quickly as possible.
Even under difficult funding circumstances, the agency is seeing some positive signs of these efforts:
- The agency has already reached its Oct. 1, 2024, goal of processing more than 92% of our oldest cases.
- Initial claims in pending status have dropped by over 70,000 since mid-June.
- The average age of an initial disability claim in pending status is down nearly 10 days since July.
- For 11 consecutive weeks, the DDS offices have now closed out more initial cases each week than they have received.
SSA will continue to work to drive down disability processing times while calling on Congress to fund the President’s FY25 Budget request which would greatly help in meeting the needs of people with disabilities throughout the country.
Did you find this Information helpful?
Tags: Commissioner, Disability
See CommentsAbout the Author
Comments
Leave a Comment
Please review our Comment Policy before leaving a comment. For your safety, please do not post Personally Identifiable Information (such as your Social Security Number, address, phone number, email address, bank account number, or birthdate) on our blog.
Robert B.
To who that might be concerned
61 yo 35 plus years of contributions
5 blue book diagnosis
13.02 throat cancer treated with radiation documented with medical evidence
4.00 cardiovascular
4.02 heart failure. Ejection fraction 30% documented
4.04 ischemic medical and non medical documentation
4.05 arrhythmias documented EKG
11.04 vascular incidence to brain 2 different episodes documented with medical records
Truck driver 30 plus years
Unable to pass a United State Department of Transportation medical exam due to ALL my medical diagnoses
No other work history for past 30 years
DDS has been completing a medical review since February 12, 2024, CE completed July 28, 2024
Is this an example of not enough staff to make a decision or is it an example of SSA failing policy, lack of funds to meet demands or Federal workers not doing their jobs?
Stephanie
All of this good but still doesn’t help people about to lose homes cars with no income coming in the land lord doesn’t care about you waiting 12 months for SSDI or SSI then if you try to struggle to work it’s held against you so what are people to do and Covid been over 4 yrs ago we still on that same story we need help and it’s not coming in time
Sarah M.
It would be nice if more effort was made to reduce errors and for SSA to address issues more quickly when they’re at fault. My case is at the AC, and after waiting about 15 months for a decision, I learned that my case had somehow been lost by them. Lawyer had the confirmation my request for review was received. It’s been two months since then, and when I asked the attorney for an update, it sounded an awful lot like my case wasn’t getting eyes on it yet. I would have had a decision by this point if not for agency mistakes.
This is also after my case sat for ages in the department that handles civil suits. I made a few phone calls and learned the AC hadn’t been sent it for write-up of instructions for a remand hearing. Two big delays.
It’s unlikely the AC will decide to approve my benefits, so I have at least one more ALJ hearing to deal with. I would not be surprised if I’m forced to file civil suit again, though – the decisions issued by the ALJ so far have had massive failings in understanding the condition I have. That adds at least a year to this. I submitted my first application in 2017, then a second after attorneys dropped me close to the deadline to file civil suit and I could only get another attorney to help if I started a new application. It’s insane that I’m at seven years now, agency errors keep adding time, and I keep having denials written by judges who don’t seem to get that the doctor supporting me is an expert in his field. They discount his opinion when his name is on research cited in an SSR explaining how to evaluate the condition. Yet, credentials are ignored. When local attorneys won’t take cases involving a particular medical condition, perhaps the agency should arrange for training for ALJs to ensure they’re issuing fair decisions.
Den
hello
Aba H.
Dear Comm’r O’Malley,
In the September 2024 AARP Bulletin, you were quoted as saying delays in disability determinations by state run offices (DDS) “is where our largest backlog is right now.” Maybe that’s because the SSA lets the states run it? I’d ask you to consider transitioning to having the SSA run it. The states, especially most of the southern states, aren’t doing a good job if their adjudication delays are over 300 days (it shouldn’t be taking more than 90 days). It took about a year to get the wrinkles out of the SSI program following its launch in 1974, but SSA runs it far better and more uniformly than the fifty states administered aid to the aged and disabled whose income and resources were insufficient to cover basic needs.
Quacy M.
people in canarsie and canarsie community thought it was a competition to do social security. get it done before us