Social Security has posted its most recent update on the average processing time at each of its hearing offices. Despite Social Security’s efforts to reduce wait times, the average processing time is not declining. Long wait times exist at every Social Security hearing office, but some offices are doing a much better job than others.
The Providence Rhode Island hearing office takes the top stop with the best average processing time of 325 days. Right behind Providence is Boston, which has an average processing time of 352 days. Rounding out the top five are the Houston North hearing office with 360 days, followed by Manchester New Hampshire at 375 days and Portland Maine at 400 days.
Those hearing offices are doing a relatively good job of processing hearing requests, but the processing time typically correlates to how many cases each office has to process. On the other end of the spectrum, the offices with the longest wait times are overwhelmed with cases and the processing times keeps increasing. The office with the longest wait time, 864 days, is San Juan Puerto Rico. San Juan is followed by the National Hearing Center in Chicago, which has a wait time of 820 days. Completing the top five longest wait times are three New York hearing offices. At number three is Manhattan at 772 days followed by Buffalo at 764 days and the Bronx at 760 days. Queens is among the top 10 longest wait times are 738 days.
Social Security has tried to take the load off some of the hearing locations by transferring cases to other offices, but it appears this practice is no working too well. Other measures Social Security has tried is to institute video hearings so Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) from different locations can adjudicate cases, but this practice had not reduced wait times much either.
