The Obama Administration has committed to helping our fellow Americans in need by allocating more of the Nation’s budget to the preservation and improvement of the Social Security disability insurance approval process. In response to increased application in addition to existing backlog of claims, SSA has committed to increasing their processing capacities in a number of ways.
Extended Service Team(EST) are new centralized units that tasked to assist in with hearing backlog in flood areas that experienced increased applications. The purpose of these teams is explained by SSA Commisioner Astrue, “These centralized units have reduced the hearings backlog and improved processing times at some of the hardest-hit hearing offices....”
In FY 2010, SSA plans to place 280 new employees in four States (Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma , and Mississippi ) to help staff the teams that will be able to quickly take cases from the hardest hit States.
DDS Federal Units in each of the ten regions are tasked with assisting the DDSs in processing cases. In FY 2010, we plan to provide 237 additional hires in these units. The increases at the DDA level also include more medical consultants in order to prevent expensive and much dreaded consultative examination.
Virtual Screening Units have been erected with senior attorneys tasked to review the disability hearing backlog for potential awards.SSA believes that the screening methodology and the electronic folder to move work to the members of the virtual unit will identify about 14,600 on-the-record, fully favorable awards this year without a hearing.
SSA eligibility and processing requirements are in constant flux, for this reason you should take a moment to update yourself on the changes in 2010 eligibility requirements.
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