Social Security

Production Initiatives in OHA's Region V Comply With Law and Guidelines Gao ID: HRD-91-36BR December 21, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the productivity initiatives implemented by the Chicago region's chief administrative law judge (ALJ) in the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA), to determine the propriety of those procedures under OHA guidelines and the Administrative Procedure Act.

GAO found that: (1) to increase productivity, the Chicago regional chief set up a project to identify Medicare appeals that he could approve without a hearing and used retired ALJ to hear appeals; (2) those productivity initiatives and the regional offices's procedures for selecting, assigning, and reviewing Medicare appeals complied with OHA guidelines and the Administrative Procedure Act; (3) during fiscal year 1989, the Chicago regional chief handled 80 percent of the appeals approved without a hearing, while the national average for ALJ approval of appeals without a hearing was 28 percent; (4) OHA procedures for calculating ALJ average dispositions included regional chief and retired ALJ decisions, but did not include them as resources assigned to the hearing office, resulting in an overstatement of hearing office productivity; and (5) the inflated average dispositions had little effect on the allocation of award money, since management used average dispositions per ALJ to rank hearing offices.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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