Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, today
announced that the Social Security Administration had made
progress in the 2007 fiscal year (FY) toward making faster
decisions on disability claims.
“Better systems and business processes were essential
to the progress we made in 2007,” Commissioner Astrue
said, “but we cannot overlook the tens of thousands
of overtime hours put in by the hardworking men and women
of the Social Security Administration.”
Commissioner Astrue highlighted the progress made in a number
of significant areas:
Social Security issued a final rule on September 5, 2007
extending nationwide its Quick Disability Determination (QDD)
process. 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 person’s allegations
can be quickly and easily obtained. In New England,
where the process was being tested, about 3 percent of all
new cases were identified as QDD cases and processed in an
average of 11 days. Today, Arizona, New Jersey and
North Dakota have started using QDD as part of a staged national
roll-out that will be completed early next year.
The Social Security Administration also virtually eliminated
its backlog of FY 2007 “aged” disability hearings
cases. “Aged” cases, defined as cases pending
1,000 days or more, were reduced from 63,770 cases at the
beginning of FY 2007 to 108 cases at the end of September. |
