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HEHS-95-228R 1 (1995-07-28)

handle is hein.gao/gaobackwt0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAO United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 Health, Education and Human Services Division B-261609 July 28, 1995 The Honorable Sam M. Gibbons Ranking Minority Member Committee on Ways and Means House of Representatives Dear Mr. Gibbons: Over the last several years, backlogs and case processing times have increased substantially at the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) . Because of your concerns regarding this issue, on July 15, 1994, you requested that we review SSA's efforts to reduce backlogs at OHA. More specifically, we were asked to determine (1) what steps were taken by SSA in the -past to address OHA backlogs and increasing case processing times and what has been achieved, (2) what is currently being done in the short term to reduce backlogs, and (3) what needs to be done in the long term to make the disability determination process more timely and efficient. Following our briefing to your staff on July 19, 1995, you asked that we provide preliminary information on current short-term efforts to address OHA's growing disability backlogs. This correspondence discusses the growth in OHA backlogs, current initiatives to reduce them, their potential for significantly reducing backlogs, and concerns associated with SSA's efforts. We conducted our review of SSA's current efforts between January 30 and May 31, 1995. This included a review of SSA's backlog reduction plans, discussions with SSA headquarters officials responsible for the development and implementation of these plans, and visits to 4 of SSA's 10 regional offices (Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and New York) to determine the implementation status of current initiatives and concerns associated with them. In summary, SSA has developed a set of short-term initiatives to address OHA's backlogs and processing times from an agency-wide perspective. These initiatives are primarily designed to stem the flow of cases from SSA's field offices and state disability determination services (DDS) to OHA and thereby reduce the number of cases GAO/HEHS-95-228R OHA Backlogs te2I 170/

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