We often talk about the backlog of Social Security disability applicants waiting for hearings before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), but the backlog of disability benefit recipients waiting for their past-due benefits is something that does not get discussed as much. Social Security has actually made some headway reducing the backlog for claimants waiting for a hearing, but not so much on the backlog of people waiting for their past-due benefits, many who have been waiting six months or longer.
In April of 2018 the Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report recommending that Social Security develop a plan to address the backlog at Social Security Processing Service Centers, commonly referred to as payment centers, but little has been done to fix the problem.
Social Security backlogs, no matter at the hearing level or at the payment centers is due to a lack of employee resources due to a lack of funding. According to the OIG report, there are a total of eight payment centers nationwide and six of these payment centers are responsible for serving approximately 60 million Social Security beneficiaries. This equates to 10 million people being served by each service center. Below is background from the report and a summary of findings of the report.
Background
PSCs are responsible for paying Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) benefits, administering the Medicare program, and handling a variety of other functions essential to maintaining beneficiary records. The Social Security Administration (SSA) maintains eight processing centers nationwide: six process similar workloads while the remaining two handle specialized workloads. PSCs 1 through 6 play a key role in serving approximately 60 million OASDI beneficiaries and handling items referred from approximately 1,230 field offices, about 170 hearing offices, National Hearing Centers, the Appeals Council, and telephone service centers as well as those generated by automated computer operations. PSCs handle such tasks as awarding and adjusting benefits, issuing payments, updating records, and resolving complex issues. Each year, the Deputy Commissioner for Operations establishes an operating plan that defines operating priorities at PSCs, field offices, and hearing offices in the form of Public Service Indicators based on the public’s changing needs and the challenges SSA faces.
The Findings
The combined volume of all pending workload items at PSCs 1 through 6 more than tripled, from approximately 1.1 million at the beginning of FY 2013 to about 3.5 million by the end of FY 2016. Work receipts and staffing were among the factors that accounted for the growth in PSC pending workloads. Work receipts increased 18 percent from about 16 million in FY 2013 to over 19 million in FY 2016. Additionally, the PSCs’ ability to hire employees was limited because of budget constraints. From FY 2013 to the end of FY 2016, core technical staff at PSCs 1 through 6 declined by 7 percent. In addition, because of a large influx of new employees at the beginning of FY 2015, the proportion of experienced to new technicians fell significantly. Further, training and mentoring new employees required extensive resources, which reduced the number of experienced staff available to process work and contributed to the increase in pending workload items during the audit period. These new hires completed their extensive training while PSC workloads were experiencing the largest growth. As such, we found the increase in pending workload items resulted not only from the growth in work receipts and a reduction of staff but also from the sharp decline in overall staff experience.
