NPRM: Proposed New Listings for Mental Impairments

Olan Barnes · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 1648 Location: Michigan

A friend of mine is curious about judges Robert Gill and Jennifer Millington with the Fort Lauderdale office.

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 01:54 am Post subject:

8) I don't know about those two, but there is apparently a lot going on in the Chicago office. It seems that most of the ALJs there have filed a grievance with the HOCALJ.

Olan Barnes · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 1648 Location: Michigan

This is what you are talking about:

http://aljdiscussion.proboards107.com/index.cgi?board=temp&action=display&thread=657&page=1#10879

Still waiting for information for my friend.

user59 · Joined: 30 Dec 2008 Posts: 1

Jennifer Millington is a new ALJ. She was formerly the regional attorney for ODAR in the Denver Region.

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 02:58 pm Post subject:

Interesting database of ODAR ALJs' production courtesy of the Oregonian's FOIA request:

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.....y_database.html

You can search stats by ALJ name

Oldguy · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 35

This is a more complete link to Guest's post of ALJ decisions. VERY interesting reading
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2008/12/social_security_database.html

David Traver · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 01:53 am Post subject:

I've been playing with this a little. At first I thought it was only for the ALJs local to the newspaper. But nooooo. It's everybody.

Tricks, enter a year and no date and get everybody. Enter a partial name and it searches for the part of the name. I like that it is from a newspaper, not some blog.

Nifty. The ALJs that are working hard to keep us appeals attorneys in practice really do have the lowest award rates and the highest denial rates. It's no coincidence that their names appear over and over again in District Court remands. Who knew!

Useful? Probably not too helpful for specific cases. Does it make a point? Pick out your suspected low-producer or Judge-turn-em-down and check it out yourself. Judges will be able to use this to see if they are in the pack or operating out on the tail of the data. For example, one, "let's make a deal" ALJ had only 10 fully favorable decisions in one year. Everything else that was "favorable" had to have a negotiated onset date. What a travesty. Hopefully this database will help him see that he should be a Judge and stop playing Monty Hall outside the hearing room.

firsttimeguest · Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 2

With all due respect, David, I don't know how you, or anyone, can determine how many dates of onset have been "negotiated" by any ALJ, based on this database. SSA does not track that information; the "partially favorable" category applies only to cases in which a decision is written which is unfavorable in part and favorable in part, e.g., a case in which the ALJ decides on a later onset date which is not agreed to by the claimant. A case in which the claimant has agreed to a later onset date is written, and counted, as a fully favorable.

Olan Barnes · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 1648 Location: Michigan

Maybe not totally on point but when I was with a DDS when someone had a fractures with staged surgical procedures and was disabled for longer than a year but the condition had healed that created a closed period. He applied for a initial closed period and it would be granted and would be so noted on the 831. It would be so noted on the PDN and would be fully favorable and the claimant may in fact be back to work. I have also had claimants call me and say they are back to work and they want to amend their application to a closed period - then the answer is for them to call the DO or the 800 number.

David Traver · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 09:18 pm Post subject:

deltajudge · Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Posts: 434

8) We had an ALJ in the last office I worked in before I retired. He was bi-polar, on lithuim and a nut. How he ever got selected, only those that interviewed him know. He liked to lay hands on the ladies in and out of the office, and was given the choice of early retirement or removal. He removed himself. Anyway, for whatever reason, that was his big thing, negotiating onset dates. I guess it gave him some sort of control, but unfortunately several times he negotiated a date past the DLI.

Insider (Ret) · Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 01:56 pm Post subject:

I should probably shut up (oh my, that left an opening, didn't it?) about the Oregonian's delightful ALJ database. After all, in a former life, I spent rather a few hours/days/weeks pouring over old-fashioned spread sheets of these data elements, trying without success to figure out what made the durned system work as it did. What is most amusing about this to me at the moment is how many of the ALJs who the agency considers to be its stars come nowhere near the productivity level that the powers-that-be have decided is "acceptable." Not remotely close in some cases. And those who do reach--and far exceed--those levels invariably do so by doing the exact opposite of what the powers-that-be would like to see in terms of case outcome. Namely, they pay everyone who has more than a hangnail. See the HOCALJ in Harrisburg for details.

David Traver · Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 04:00 pm Post subject:

I have long contended that going though SSA's adjudication process is no better than a coin flip. If I had access to a complete spreadsheet of the entire data base it would be somewhat easy to determine the standard deviation and standard error of measurement and related statistical facts aimed at measuring inter-rater reliability. With a little bit of number mashing we would know if the entire ODAR system could be replaced by an entry-level clerk with a 50 cent piece. See e.g. http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765/reliab.htm If somebody sends me a complete spreadsheet of the data I will be happy to send it to a Ph.D. medical research friend of mine for such analysis and I will post her results and calculations here.

Replacing the adjudication framework with a coin flip would be a substantial savings to SSA, which could use the same 50 cent piece in thousands of cases. Indeed, SSA could speed up the process a hundred fold by getting 100 coins and clerks. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_flip for technical details. I suppose to with ten minutes of programming a random number generator could be added to SSA data base to automatically flip a virtual coin and do it ever faster than a room full of clerk with coins.

In fact, the data may very well support a simpler way to handle the matter. That would be to pay the cases with even social security numbers and deny the rest. That would have the added benefit of letting claimants know in advance if they should apply for disability benefits by simply looking at the last digit of the social security number, thereby instantly reducing the applications by half.

The point of this is to suggest that SSA is using an adjudication model and it happens to be the wrong tool to apply to the allocation of resources to the disabled. (Unless you think that the disabled should be subjected to coin-flip law).

I think we should take a close look at the data. My comments regarding the coin flip are intentionally sarcastic, pointing out a system that appears to have no inter-rater validity.

MikeWalters · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1315 Location: Cincinnati OH

When I was a claims rep our office manager insisted that you could achieve similar results to the DDS system by having the CR eyeball the claimant and give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the question of whether the claimant was disabled (this was back in the prehistoric age when disability applications were typically done via face-to-face interviews). I suspect he was right, although the allowance rate may have actually been higher than what the Kentucky DDS was paying.

David Traver · Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 04:34 pm Post subject:

When I was running a large vocational evaluation unit for a local Goodwill, the clients would all come in on Monday morning and sit in the waiting room before we had the paperwork. I discouraged "guess that disability" by evaluators walking through and looking at the clients to figure out which clients would be assigned to which evaluator. However, their guesses were usually right on the mark. One could argue convincingly, however, that a guess has no place anywhere in SSA adjudication.

Where the inter-rater reliability is at the same statistical value (or less) than a coin-flip, it is not substantial. At that point it would simply be a full-employment program run for and by the people residing within the bureaucracy at the cost of the citizens they were intended to serve. I strongly suspect that this is the present status of the adjudication framework in place at SSA. By this, I do not suggest that SSA or its minions do this out of malice. I suggest it is simply a bad institutional habit of massive and historic proportions.

Guest

Simple math: 1150-ish judges, only 280 have approval rates below 50%. My, my.

Yes, the decisional totals are an absolute hoot. Lots of big guns with egg on their faces for low, low, low numbers, especially ironic from the management jokers beating up line judges to produce 700 per year. And what about these clowns issuing 1000+. The 2800 guy is a scandal. What is really funny is that NONE of the judges are talking about the data base publicly.

David Traver · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 05:20 pm Post subject:

Since those ALJ decision are the "final decisions of the Commissioner" in the vast majority of cases, we can reasonably assume that the majority of cases decided at DDS are "wrong." Eh?

You are right. I have had the impression that SSA worked hard to keep this data from seeing the light of day. Now that it is out, there is little to support the adjudication framework at SSA other than as an employment program for those employed in the process.

Guest · Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 08:27 pm Post subject:

Nah.
--Math doesn't work. Lots of cases are paid before they reach the hearing level.
--The state agencies use standards different from those used at the hearings (like, can this guy really work?) Something kind of practical about the approach, however, one may shriek about disregarding the agency regs and rulings.
--Nobody does anything about ensuring the record is complete before the hearing level.

David Traver · Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:46 pm Post subject:

These are all cases that reached the level where they were assigned to and resolved by ALJs. "Numbers" will work just fine.

http://www.nosscr.org/aljdata.html (main page)

http://www.nosscr.org/xls/aljdata.xls (xls spreadsheet)