Social Security disability claimants who receive notice that their request for a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) has been transferred to the National Hearing Center (NHC) sometimes get easily confused about what this means.
Request for hearings are transferred to the NHC to help speed up the hearings process when a local hearing’s office has a caseload backlog. When this is the case the NHC will pick-up the case and assign a judge from a different jurisdiction to adjudicate the hearing. The hearing will remain in the locale of the claimant’s hearing office, but the ALJ will be in a different location and will appear via video conferencing.
The main purpose of cases being transferred, according to the Social Security Administration, is “the NHC’s flexibility has allowed the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) to transfer older cases from some of the most heavily backlogged offices, thereby assisting those offices in reducing their pending levels and processing times.”
Although Social Security sees the benefits of the NHC assisting with disability hearings, there are also some drawbacks.
The first challenge the NHC has is that some of the NHC has limited space and limited access to the types of video equipment required for video hearings. In addition, because the NHCs prefer using vocational and medical experts located in the same jurisdiction as the claimant, this can create scheduling conflicts for these experts who have been ordered to appeal before the ALJ to give testimony.
If a claimant is notified that their case has been transferred to a NHC it is not an absolute they have to have a video hearing. Claimants have the right to ask Social Security to have an in-person hearing before a local ALJ rather than having a video hearing. For more information about the NHC click here.
