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Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

May/June, 1998

Highlights of the 1998 SSA/DDS Management Forum
by Debi Gardiner, NADE President

THE 1998 SSA/DDS SPRING Management Forum was held March 23-27 Denver, Colorado. The meeting was informative and the subjects were varied. Jeff Price and I attended the NCDDD Meeting on Monday morning. I provided them with a short overview of NADE’s recent accomplishments. Both Jeff and I spoke with many of the DDS Administrators throughout the week and we were very pleased at the interest they showed in NADE. We met a lot of people and learned that NADE is widely known and respected. The meeting opened with Susan Daniels, newly appointed Deputy Commissioner for Programs and Policy, presenting a video featuring Commissioner Kenneth Apfel. The commissioner spoke on the challenges we are facing - childhood, redesign and budget. He stated that he looks forward to working closely with those in the Disability program. Dr. Daniels spoke on the budget issues, processing times, pending caseloads and productivity. She is looking forward to the future: fighting fraud, DATS, CDRs and employment strategy and solvency. She stated that the agency would continue to fight fraud. They will continue to push forward with the professional development (DATS) that began with NADE. She discussed the seven year plan for CDRs and employment strategy - incorporating SSI childhood, updating projections, inventory and assess workloads and update, assess, delete, add and prioritize action items. By the year 2000, we should be current in the DI CDR backlog and in the SSI backlog by 2002. She spoke on the profiling and mailer process, smoothing the case flow, expanding our repertoire (getting away from the ‘vanilla” and “chocolate’ claims) of CDR strategies and being alert to the outcomes of the CDRs.

She stated that the point of the CDR process was to assure the public that:

1. only those eligible for benefits are receiving them and

2. some of them recover and they should transfer their benefits to earnings.

She talked about employment strategy and the ticket to independence, state initiatives demonstration and the medicaid buy-in. Dr. Daniels stated that the Bunning/Kennelly bill (HR 3433) should come to the floor this summer providing for tickets for work, extending medicare for an additional two years, a disability worker tax credit and a two-for-one demo (SSA has to demonstrate on DI). Regarding solvency, she said the big picture consists of three things:

1. the importance of Social Security,

2. the need for change, and

3. the President’s approach.

Social Security is the most successful domestic program. There are some problems but it is not a crisis. She asked, “What kind of Social security program will there be in the future? The Public needs to make informed decisions. The Disability Process Redesign Team (DPRT) asked, Do we still have a reason for redesign?”. Over 50 per cent of the budget is spent on disability. Process Unification appears to be working and we need to keep it working. We need to modernize the disability process and the Quality Assurance system. There are lots of reasons to be optimistic about the Full Process Model (FPM). Sue Davis stated that this is a significant psychological change for all of us. One of the questions was - what will happen to us and our employees? July 1999 is the firm date for elimination of recon. The Single Decision Maker (SDM) regulations are to be published by the end of this year. Summary rationales will be coming down the pike. In the next 18 months, we need to focus on three things: Planning, planning and planning. We also need to focus on the human issues and to figure out who is going to do what work, where and when. NPRM is due out early May on the first part of FPM. They are seeing continuous improvements on everything and the trends are very positive. Process Unification was also discussed. The purpose in rationales was to explain our thought process so that it could be understood by the Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA). As we cut out a lot of the writing, we had somewhat of a lesser product. (This was piloted only on recon affirmations). We need to provide logical and meaningful explanations of the findings. It takes additional time for this process, approximately 20 to 25 minutes on initial claims and 30 - 40 minutes on recon claims. According to Charles Boyer, Chief ALJ, Process Unification is an unqualified success. The process unification trend is to make similar decisions on similar cases at all levels. There was a panel discussion on childhood cases and many breakout sessions available to the attendees. Many of the handouts from the Forum were sent to the NADE Board members. If you are interested in more detailed information, please contact your Regional Director.

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