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Donna CalvertAssistant Deputy CommissionerOffice of Disability Adjudication and Review
FY 14-15: Agency Priority Goal
Expand the use of video hearings. We will deliver a world-class customer experience by expanding the use of video technology to hold hearings.
Priority Goal
Goal Overview
Social Security pays disability benefits to people who cannot work because they have a medical condition expected to last at least one year or result in death. When we receive a claim for disability benefits, we consider all the information concerning a case before we make an eligibility decision. When we make a decision, we send a letter explaining our decision. If you do not agree with our decision, you can appeal, asking us to look at your case again. The reconsideration is the first level of our appeals process and involves a complete review of the claim by someone who did not take part in the original decision. If you disagree with the reconsideration decision, you may ask for a hearing. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) who had no part in the original decision or the reconsideration of the case conducts a hearing. Though the vast majority of hearings held are disability related, ALJs also hold hearings for non-disability related issues such as retirement.
We hold hearings either in-person at one of our 169 hearings offices or by using video teleconferencing equipment at many more locations. Those locations include:
- Other hearing offices;
- Permanent remote sites, which are leased spaces, usually in government buildings, in parts of the country some distance from hearing offices with large geographical service areas;
- Claimant-only video sites, which are typically located in Social Security field offices some distance from hearing offices with large geographical service areas;and
- Our National Hearing Centers (NHC), which are special hearing offices located around the country where we hold only video hearings.
As part of our Representative Video Project, claimants may also attend a hearing at their representative’s office if that representative owns and uses video equipment approved by Social Security.
A video hearing allows hearing participants to see and hear each other through large color television screens or desktop video units. The ALJ remains in the hearing office. The ALJ can see and speak with all hearing participants and vice versa through Social Security’s secure network. As with in-person hearings, we only record audio at video hearings.
The greatest benefit of video is that it allows us to assist offices that have more work than they can complete. Being able to move work from an office that has a significant backlog to one that does not helps us provide effective service to all claimants. The economic downturn did not affect all of our hearing offices equally. Due to regional differences in the economy, some hearing offices saw their workloads soar while others did not. Rather than only build new offices in our hardest-hit areas, and hiring and moving staff at great expense, Social Security’s response was to leverage our developing video hearing technology. Because of video, we can electronically move the work to an ALJ ready to hear and decide the case.
Though we had been using video on a very limited basis since FY 2005, our breakthrough came with the introduction of the NHCs, which hold only video hearings and can therefore provide relief to any hearing office throughout the country. Beginning in FY 2008, we began opening this new kind of office.
We also accelerated the placement of video units in hearing offices. Between FY 2008 and FY 2013, we placed 1,032 video units in the hearing operation, with more than 960 of those going to traditional hearing offices. This aggressive expansion allowed hearing offices to provide assistance to one another and to hold hearings in far-flung permanent remote sites within a hearing office’s own service area. In this way, offices in California and Florida can assist offices in the Midwest and vice-versa, depending on the changing needs of our offices. In FY 2013, traditional hearing offices held approximately 23 percent of all hearings by video.
We have incrementally increased the percentage of hearings we hold by video from 20 percent in FY 2010 and FY 2011, to 23 percent in FY 2012 and now to 26 percent (179,308 hearings) in FY 2013. Much of this growth came from increasing our video footprint, achieved by equipping more and more of our hearing offices and remote hearing sites with video equipment each successive year. We are aiming to hold 28 percent of hearings by video in FY 2014 and 30 percent in FY 2015.
Though we are nearing the saturation point for video equipment placement, we believe further video hearing expansion is possible, and that we can still greatly improve customer service. We can hold more video hearings by improving the quality, marketing, and deployment of video units and by publishing a final regulation that puts time limits on a claimant’s right to decline a video hearing.
Further expansion of video hearings positions Social Security for maximum flexibility in responding to changing customer needs. Video lets us electronically move work rather than build “brick and mortar” offices whose useful lifespan may be limited.
Strategies
To date, the growth in the number of video hearings we have held has been dependent on the growth of our video infrastructure. Though we will attempt to continue to expand our video infrastructure in FY 2014 and FY 2015, we anticipate that constrained information technology (IT) funding may limit further expansion. Even without IT funding, we plan to increase video hearings use by:
- Improving the quality of video hearings. Poor video quality is cited by ALJs who don’t hold video hearings and by claimants and representatives when they decline a video hearing. To address this, we will improve video quality by;
- Replacing older units that have exceeded their usable lifespan;
- Updating the system infrastructure of representative- owned video equipment; and
- Pursuing low-cost alternatives, such as improving the lighting, acoustics, furniture, and room layouts in our facilities.
- Improving the marketing of video hearings. By revising our public information materials and creating electronic training on video hearings, we can better inform the public and our employees about the advantages of holding a hearing by video.
- Publishing a final rule on the “Changes to Scheduling and Appearing at Hearings.” Publishing this final rule will require claimants and representatives to decline a video hearing within 30 days of receiving the notice acknowledging receipt of the request for hearing. These added requirements should allow us to more efficiently schedule video hearings and decrease “last minute” hearing cancellations.
- Redeploying existing video units for maximum efficiency. We will determine if we can expand video hearing use by moving existing units from offices that hold fewer video hearings to other offices that lack the video equipment necessary to maximize video hearings. We want to balance providing video coverage to all offices, states, and regions with providing greater video support to those offices and regions that use video most.
Progress Update
Through the end of September, we held 152,880 video hearings, or 27.11% out of a total of 563,893 hearings. The goal was 30% for FY 2015. We completed studies of lighting and layout requirements of video hearings rooms and received funding to retrofit hearing sites with the new lighting requirements. Thirty pilot sites were planned to be retrofitted by the end of FY 2015. Of these 30 pilot locations, 21 locations have been awarded with a ‘Notice to Proceed’, and 9 are still pending. We continue to monitor the effect of the opt-out regulation on the percentage of video hearings held. For the period September 2014 through September 2015, 29% of claimants declined video hearings
FY 2015 Milestone Updates
Q1 Milestone – Experiment with our model hearing room and claimant-only video rooms to study how different factors (e.g. lighting, acoustics, room layouts, furniture) affect video quality. Use the results to make adjustments that will improve video quality.
- We completed studies of lighting and layout requirements of video hearing rooms and received funding to retrofit hearing sites with the new lighting requirements. While no hearing sites were retrofitted by the end of the first quarter, 31 pilot sites are planned to be retrofitted by the end of FY 2015. Based on stakeholder input, we will collaborate with the Office of Operations on strategies to address issues with certain hearing sites that are located in field and regional facilities.
Q2 Milestone – Improve our video footprint nationally by examining geographic video coverage. Determine if video coverage is adequate for all states and regions and redeploy units as necessary to maximize national video footprint.
- We upgraded our video infrastructure with new software allowing easier troubleshooting and by increasing the video units on the SSA network. We are also building model-hearing sites configured so that hearing participants can better see and hear each other. We requested supplemental IT funding ($3 million) for additional video equipment for claimant only video (COV) sites and judge only video (JOV) sites in support of our video infrastructure. As a result of these initiatives, we have increased the agency’s geographic video hearing coverage.
Q3 Milestone – Assess the impact of the “Changes to Scheduling and Appearing at Hearings” regulation. Consider regulatory or procedural changes if the regulation results in an excessive number of video declinations.
- We established tracking report on national level video “opt outs” (declinations). For the period September 2014 through January 2015, 28% of claimants declined video hearings.
Q4 Milestone–Improve the quality of video hearings by completing the replacement of all rear projection video units.
- We have replaced the remaining 262 rear projection units (i.e., “ViewStations”) and deployed all planned units. The replacements and additions will improve the overall quality of the video transmission. We received supplemental IT funding ($3 million) for additional video equipment for claimant only video (COV) sites and judge only video (JOV) sites in support of our video infrastructure. We are also working with the Office of Systems on a Global Video Service Delivery Strategy to further improve the infrastructure and quality of video hearings.
Next Steps:
Video Hearings is a secondary indicator for our FY 2016-2017 Hearings Pending Agency Priority Goal.
Next Steps
Contributing Programs & Other Factors
Disability Insurance Program
Office of Systems
Office of Budget, Finance, Quality and Management
Third Party Representatives of claimants
State Disability Determination Services
Administrative Law Judge hiring
Expand All
Strategic Goals
Strategic Goal:
Serve the Public through a Stronger, More Responsive Disability Program
Statement: No Data Available
Strategic Objectives
Statement:
Description:
Our employees and State partners in the DDSs are committed to balancing the need to make high-quality, accurate, and consistent decisions with the objective of decreasing the time claimants must wait for decisions at all levels.
We are using a new analytical tool that provides many of our ALJs and support staff with MI on their work relative to the rest of their office, their region, and the Nation. The information we gain from this analysis will help us to improve the way we review and decide disability cases, making our process simpler and more efficient.
We will continue our partnerships with other agencies to further modernize key aspects of our disability process. These include our partnership with the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine to revise our disability guidelines to reflect the most up-to-date medical knowledge; our collaboration with the Department of Labor to update our occupational information; and our partnership with the research community, for example the Disability Research Consortium, to refine our policy development.
We will also expand the use of technology to improve quality and consistency. A few years ago, we implemented the electronic Claims Analysis Tool (eCAT) which assists disability examiners in documenting initial decisions to ensure compliance with agency policy. We plan to expand eCAT to process CDRs. Based on the success of eCAT, we used a similar approach to build a tool we can use at the appeals level. We will eventually extend eCAT to our field offices, resulting in our agency having one tool to assist in ensuring proper documentation and compliance with agency policy throughout the entire disability process.
Expanding the use of video hearings – one of our key initiatives – will help increase efficiency and improve customer service. Specifically, it will enable us to balance workloads across the country, reduce the need for (and the costs of) our ALJs and other hearing office staff to travel between offices and to remote sites to hold hearings, and reduce the need for claimants to travel long distances to hearing offices. We also are working to expand video hearing participation more broadly to allow more attorneys and non-attorney representatives to install and use their own video equipment to attend hearings from their own offices.
Strategies:
- Expand use of MI to identify training needs and areas for improvement;
- Broaden use of case analysis tools;
- Expand use of predictive modeling;
- Simplify policies;
- Collaborate with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to collect updated occupational information; and
- Formalize our pre-decisional quality review processes to increase national uniformity.
Statement:
Description:
We remain committed to providing the best service to the public by exploring new technologies and using modern tools to improve efficiencies throughout our disability program. We are improving the claims process, making it easier for the public to file disability applications and enabling us to process applications more efficiently.
When fully implemented, our State DDS and Federal disability case processing sites will use a common system (i.e., DCPS). DCPS will replace all the disparate applications currently in use at the State DDSs and Federal sites, many of which are rigid, outdated, and resource intensive. The new system will incorporate additional functionality, such as decision support tools, improved quality checks, improved MI, and compatibility with industry standards for electronic medical records.
Expanded use of health IT offers yet another opportunity to realize efficiencies in the disability process. Among other positive effects, health IT will enable us to quickly recognize if a treating healthcare provider is also one of our health IT partners. If a provider is a health IT partner, our systems communicate directly with the provider’s systems to request medical records, confirm the claimant or beneficiary has provided an authorization for release of information form, and return the provider’s records to us. Health IT has the potential to increase our efficiency and lower the claimant’s wait time for a decision by giving us medical evidence within minutes rather than days or weeks.
Strategies:
- Enhance our ability to share workloads among our offices to maximize resources;
- Increase process automation; and
- Expand the use of health IT.
Enhance Employment Support Programs and Create New Opportunities for Returning Beneficiaries to Work
Statement:
Description:
We are exploring ways to improve our employment support programs to help people with disabilities remain in the workforce or return to work as quickly as possible. Currently, the complexity of our rules and beneficiaries’ fears of incurring an overpayment because of earnings can discourage their attempts to work. Working with Congress, we will seek to simplify work incentive policies and look for ways to minimize improper payments because of earnings. We will strengthen our employment support programs, including the Ticket to Work program, by applying the results of prior research and using information we capture in our systems to more effectively focus our efforts. We also will provide help for beneficiaries who want to work through the Work Incentive Planning and Assistance program. We are committed to the idea that we must focus our employment support efforts on ensuring that people who use those supports work at their maximum capacity, reaching a level of self-sufficient earnings whenever possible.
We will encourage young people who receive SSI to reduce their dependency on disability benefits as they turn 18. Recent research we funded, the Youth Transition Demonstration, has found that policy changes and improved employment services to young adults who receive SSI can sharply improve their employment outcomes. We will build on the early results of our Youth Transition Demonstration as we work with the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services to coordinate additional efforts to promote self-sufficiency among child SSI recipients and their families.
Strategies:
- Partner with the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services to implement Promoting Readiness of Minors on SSI;
- Simplify work incentive policies and improve programs such as Ticket to Work and the Vocational Rehabilitation Cost Reimbursement program; and
- Develop return-to-work demonstration proposals.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement:
Increase video hearings. By September 30, 2015, increase the percentage of hearings we hold by video from 26 percent in FY 2013 to 30 percent.
Description:
Social Security pays disability benefits to people who cannot work because they have a medical condition expected to last at least one year or result in death. When we receive a claim for disability benefits, we consider all the information concerning a case before we make an eligibility decision. When we make a decision, we send a letter explaining our decision. If you do not agree with our decision, you can appeal, asking us to look at your case again. The reconsideration is the first level of our appeals process and involves a complete review of the claim by someone who did not take part in the original decision. If you disagree with the reconsideration decision, you may ask for a hearing. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) who had no part in the original decision or the reconsideration of the case conducts a hearing. Though the vast majority of hearings held are disability related, ALJs also hold hearings for non-disability related issues such as retirement.
We hold hearings either in-person at one of our 169 hearings offices or by using video teleconferencing equipment at many more locations. Those locations include:
- Other hearing offices;
- Permanent remote sites, which are leased spaces, usually in government buildings, in parts of the country some distance from hearing offices with large geographical service areas;
- Claimant-only video sites, which are typically located in Social Security field offices some distance from hearing offices with large geographical service areas;and
- Our National Hearing Centers (NHC), which are special hearing offices located around the country where we hold only video hearings.
As part of our Representative Video Project, claimants may also attend a hearing at their representative’s office if that representative owns and uses video equipment approved by Social Security.
A video hearing allows hearing participants to see and hear each other through large color television screens or desktop video units. The ALJ remains in the hearing office. The ALJ can see and speak with all hearing participants and vice versa through Social Security’s secure network. As with in-person hearings, we only record audio at video hearings.
The greatest benefit of video is that it allows us to assist offices that have more work than they can complete. Being able to move work from an office that has a significant backlog to one that does not helps us provide effective service to all claimants. The economic downturn did not affect all of our hearing offices equally. Due to regional differences in the economy, some hearing offices saw their workloads soar while others did not. Rather than only build new offices in our hardest-hit areas, and hiring and moving staff at great expense, Social Security’s response was to leverage our developing video hearing technology. Because of video, we can electronically move the work to an ALJ ready to hear and decide the case.
Though we had been using video on a very limited basis since FY 2005, our breakthrough came with the introduction of the NHCs, which hold only video hearings and can therefore provide relief to any hearing office throughout the country. Beginning in FY 2008, we began opening this new kind of office.
We also accelerated the placement of video units in hearing offices. Between FY 2008 and FY 2013, we placed 1,032 video units in the hearing operation, with more than 960 of those going to traditional hearing offices. This aggressive expansion allowed hearing offices to provide assistance to one another and to hold hearings in far-flung permanent remote sites within a hearing office’s own service area. In this way, offices in California and Florida can assist offices in the Midwest and vice-versa, depending on the changing needs of our offices. In FY 2013, traditional hearing offices held approximately 23 percent of all hearings by video.
We have incrementally increased the percentage of hearings we hold by video from 20 percent in FY 2010 and FY 2011, to 23 percent in FY 2012 and now to 26 percent (179,308 hearings) in FY 2013. Much of this growth came from increasing our video footprint, achieved by equipping more and more of our hearing offices and remote hearing sites with video equipment each successive year. We are aiming to hold 28 percent of hearings by video in FY 2014 and 30 percent in FY 2015.
Though we are nearing the saturation point for video equipment placement, we believe further video hearing expansion is possible, and that we can still greatly improve customer service. We can hold more video hearings by improving the quality, marketing, and deployment of video units and by publishing a final regulation that puts time limits on a claimant’s right to decline a video hearing.
Further expansion of video hearings positions Social Security for maximum flexibility in responding to changing customer needs. Video lets us electronically move work rather than build “brick and mortar” offices whose useful lifespan may be limited.
Strategic Objectives
Strategic Objective:
Improve the Quality, Consistency, and Timeliness of Our Disability Decisions
Statement:
Description:
Our employees and State partners in the DDSs are committed to balancing the need to make high-quality, accurate, and consistent decisions with the objective of decreasing the time claimants must wait for decisions at all levels.
We are using a new analytical tool that provides many of our ALJs and support staff with MI on their work relative to the rest of their office, their region, and the Nation. The information we gain from this analysis will help us to improve the way we review and decide disability cases, making our process simpler and more efficient.
We will continue our partnerships with other agencies to further modernize key aspects of our disability process. These include our partnership with the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine to revise our disability guidelines to reflect the most up-to-date medical knowledge; our collaboration with the Department of Labor to update our occupational information; and our partnership with the research community, for example the Disability Research Consortium, to refine our policy development.
We will also expand the use of technology to improve quality and consistency. A few years ago, we implemented the electronic Claims Analysis Tool (eCAT) which assists disability examiners in documenting initial decisions to ensure compliance with agency policy. We plan to expand eCAT to process CDRs. Based on the success of eCAT, we used a similar approach to build a tool we can use at the appeals level. We will eventually extend eCAT to our field offices, resulting in our agency having one tool to assist in ensuring proper documentation and compliance with agency policy throughout the entire disability process.
Expanding the use of video hearings – one of our key initiatives – will help increase efficiency and improve customer service. Specifically, it will enable us to balance workloads across the country, reduce the need for (and the costs of) our ALJs and other hearing office staff to travel between offices and to remote sites to hold hearings, and reduce the need for claimants to travel long distances to hearing offices. We also are working to expand video hearing participation more broadly to allow more attorneys and non-attorney representatives to install and use their own video equipment to attend hearings from their own offices.
Strategies:
- Expand use of MI to identify training needs and areas for improvement;
- Broaden use of case analysis tools;
- Expand use of predictive modeling;
- Simplify policies;
- Collaborate with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to collect updated occupational information; and
- Formalize our pre-decisional quality review processes to increase national uniformity.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement: Increase video hearings. By September 30, 2015, increase the percentage of hearings we hold by video from 26 percent in FY 2013 to 30 percent.
Description: Social Security pays disability benefits to people who cannot work because they have a medical condition expected to last at least one year or result in death. When we receive a claim for disability benefits, we consider all the information concerning a case before we make an eligibility decision. When we make a decision, we send a letter explaining our decision. If you do not agree with our decision, you can appeal, asking us to look at your case again. The reconsideration is the first level of our appeals process and involves a complete review of the claim by someone who did not take part in the original decision. If you disagree with the reconsideration decision, you may ask for a hearing. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) who had no part in the original decision or the reconsideration of the case conducts a hearing. Though the vast majority of hearings held are disability related, ALJs also hold hearings for non-disability related issues such as retirement. We hold hearings either in-person at one of our 169 hearings offices or by using video teleconferencing equipment at many more locations. Those locations include: As part of our Representative Video Project, claimants may also attend a hearing at their representative’s office if that representative owns and uses video equipment approved by Social Security. A video hearing allows hearing participants to see and hear each other through large color television screens or desktop video units. The ALJ remains in the hearing office. The ALJ can see and speak with all hearing participants and vice versa through Social Security’s secure network. As with in-person hearings, we only record audio at video hearings. The greatest benefit of video is that it allows us to assist offices that have more work than they can complete. Being able to move work from an office that has a significant backlog to one that does not helps us provide effective service to all claimants. The economic downturn did not affect all of our hearing offices equally. Due to regional differences in the economy, some hearing offices saw their workloads soar while others did not. Rather than only build new offices in our hardest-hit areas, and hiring and moving staff at great expense, Social Security’s response was to leverage our developing video hearing technology. Because of video, we can electronically move the work to an ALJ ready to hear and decide the case. Though we had been using video on a very limited basis since FY 2005, our breakthrough came with the introduction of the NHCs, which hold only video hearings and can therefore provide relief to any hearing office throughout the country. Beginning in FY 2008, we began opening this new kind of office. We also accelerated the placement of video units in hearing offices. Between FY 2008 and FY 2013, we placed 1,032 video units in the hearing operation, with more than 960 of those going to traditional hearing offices. This aggressive expansion allowed hearing offices to provide assistance to one another and to hold hearings in far-flung permanent remote sites within a hearing office’s own service area. In this way, offices in California and Florida can assist offices in the Midwest and vice-versa, depending on the changing needs of our offices. In FY 2013, traditional hearing offices held approximately 23 percent of all hearings by video. We have incrementally increased the percentage of hearings we hold by video from 20 percent in FY 2010 and FY 2011, to 23 percent in FY 2012 and now to 26 percent (179,308 hearings) in FY 2013. Much of this growth came from increasing our video footprint, achieved by equipping more and more of our hearing offices and remote hearing sites with video equipment each successive year. We are aiming to hold 28 percent of hearings by video in FY 2014 and 30 percent in FY 2015. Though we are nearing the saturation point for video equipment placement, we believe further video hearing expansion is possible, and that we can still greatly improve customer service. We can hold more video hearings by improving the quality, marketing, and deployment of video units and by publishing a final regulation that puts time limits on a claimant’s right to decline a video hearing. Further expansion of video hearings positions Social Security for maximum flexibility in responding to changing customer needs. Video lets us electronically move work rather than build “brick and mortar” offices whose useful lifespan may be limited.
