Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

July/August 2001

Update of Current Status of Medical Vocational Issues in Case Processing
by Ken Forbes, Oregon DDS and Shari Bratt, Nebraska DDS

THE BIREGIONAL CONFERENCE WAS PRIVILEGED to deliberate on issues brought by David Barnes, Acting Director, Division of Medical Vocational Policy, Office of Disability, SSA. Among the highlights, he noted that listing revisions have been put on hold as a result of the change in administration.

In the area of vocational policy, OD wants to revise the rulings, deal with 15 year work history, and ultimately get some sort of resolution about the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) being retired and the O-NET taking it’s place. The O-NET is a database of information that is being kept updated through the employers who directly update the information in it. Everyone should then be able to get into it and access the information we need. Unfortunately, the O-NET looks at jobs differently from the DOT. Now the rules are changed and all the pieces that we used to use on the RFC (lifting, standing, bending, and other requirements) are no longer included. Job aggregation is used to conglomerate jobs within a specific area and eliminate the details that would have allowed us to determine whether anyone can do the job.

An issue near and dear to the audience, automated perimetry is a hot topic as well at OD. While he didn’t mention us, NADE has been active on this issue. Just last year NADE, acting on a resolution by the Sacramento chapter, put together a proposal recommending that tests other than Goldmann be allowed for perimetry testing. SSA has heard a lot about the difficulty in obtaining Goldmann examinations. The law requires certain measures that are only done by the Goldmann. However, SSA thinks there is a solution. They hired the man who wrote the book on visual field disorders who says that there is a way to recreate the same measures as the Goldmann using the Humphries.