Set up to fail: SSA judges have long faced ‘too high’ productivity expectations – By Jessie Bur (Federal Times) / June 21 2021
Social Security Administration judges who rule on disability benefits appeals are expected to issue 500 to 700 decisions each year, a number that many of the judges struggle to meet, according to a recent government watchdog report.
The expectation, published in 2007 to reduce the agency’s case backlog, has had varying degrees of success from year to year, with 81 percent of the administrative law judges meeting that expectation in 2019, but just 18 percent hitting the target in 2020, according to the June 17 Government Accountability Office report.
Nearly 90 percent of the judges that GAO talked to classified the expectation as too high.
“Judges in selected hearing offices cited a variety of factors affecting their ability to meet the annual expectation. The top factor cited by judges GAO surveyed was the size of case files, which have increased five-fold on average since the expectation was established, according to SSA data,” the report said.
