The July Forum on the new Disabilty Quality Branch

JOA · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 2131

I just got a copy of the July 2010 Forum. Here's an excerpt:

Robert Petruzzelli · Joined: 03 Jul 2004 Posts: 61 Location: Cherry Hill, NJ

Dr. J,

Maybe I am jes' gettin to be a cynical old coot but seems to meeee.....

The hiring of newbies with no experience in disability adjudication is designed to be certain that "quality" is defined as upper management wants it defined. Take my experience in Quality Control/Field Assessment/Quality Review/Quality Assurance (feel free to pick the title you like- we seem to have reorganized with a new name every 9 months or so). Newly minted college grad trained in 6 weeks to spot the mistakes of caseworkers who had been at the task for years. I didn't understand then the vehemence of the "rebuttal letters" from the field offices. Looking back now, I see why they were so upset. I had absolutely no idea what really went on out there. I just cited the errors that management told me to cite. That just what the "newbies quality police" will be doing, too.

JOA · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 2131

Now, now, there's no need to be quite so Petrucynical. Yet, anyway. Unless these new attorney advisor/analysts are going to be doing something very different that other OAO analysts, they won't be deciding much of anything. They'll only be making recommendations that they will pass to AOs, AAJs, or ALJs. So it's these AOs, AAJs, and ALJs who'd have to be persuaded to any particular view of quality.

This is not to say that your post is the first time I've heard of the same kind of thing you suspect.

BTW, for those members of management who read these things, I'm off the clock all day today. Tomorrow too. Use or lose, you know.

Guest · Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 11:51 pm Post subject:

Something else to consider is the recent hiring of AAJs. It seems that the Appeals Council will soon be known as the home of aging former FedRos. And ODAR has now posted for six more...all limited to ODAR employees only. Apparently ODAR does not care that these actions only confirm the long- and widely-held view that the Appeals Council is a body of little weight or merit.

JOA · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 2131

The Executive Director of the Office of Appellate Operations is Judge Patricia A. Jonas. Judge Jonas wears a second hat as the Deputy Chair of the AC. The Chair is the Deputy Director for ODAR. I'm rather inclined to think that it's Judge Jonas who chairs the weekly AC meetings.

I'm quite sure it's under Judge Jonas that we now have an insider newsletter titled the "Executive Director's Broadcast." This semimonthly newsletter is chatty while still being informative.

I'm strongly inclined to believe that nothing that's in a newsletter can possible be sensitive information. The most recent issue, #18, gives some nonsensitive information about the new Quality Review Branches: aside from the 47 analysts mentioned in the headpost, these are to be staffed with 8 Administrative Appeals Judges, 8 Appeals Officers, and 8 Administrative Law Judges. The goal for these new branches is to look at 3500 cases this next fiscal year.

I posted above that a potential offsetting factor for having analysts hired off the street to do quality review is to have a ratio as low as 3 to 1 for adjudicator to analyst. The numbers from the newsletter gives us 2 to 1.

What's more, it sure looks like the plan is to go slow for the first year. In OAO 24 adjudicators would normally be paired up with 12 disability program branches (the DPBs being the units that carry the request for review workload). For 12 branches, 3500 cases would be closer to the workload for a month, not a year.