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With Social Security's increase funding they have taken steps to improve the backlog of Social Security Disability cases at the hearing stage. This new office should be particularly helpful to those in New Mexico but this office will also serve the rest of the country by video hearing. Commissioner Astrue also plans to use the new money to invest in technologies that will improve service. The first National Hearing Center was opened in Falls Church Virginia in 2007 to help with increasing backlogs in Atlanta Georgia, Cleveland Ohio, and Flint Michigan. The new national hearing Center will help reduce the backlogs particularly in New Mexico, Kansas City and Portland Oregon.  "With Senator Bingaman's leadership, Social Security has received additional funding to hire and fill jobs in New Mexico and throughout the nation, as well as invest in technologies that improve service," Commissioner Astrue said.  "This funding is crucial to our efforts to handle the increased workloads resulting from the economic downturn as well as the aging of the baby boom generation.  Our employees are making positive strides toward driving down the hearing backlog and providing prompt service to the public.  With sustained support, I am confident we can successfully address these challenges."

It is my hope that the new funding dedicated to programs like this will help reduce the extremely long wait times that many claimants are experiencing waiting for Social Security Disability hearing.

This post is not about special tricks that help you get a faster SSDI or SSI decision. This is about what you can do to make sure you do everything you can to get a timely decision on your social security disability case. First, you should make sure your actions are not slowing down your case. If Social Security ask you for information make sure to get the information to them as fast as possible. Do not count on SSA to get your medical evidence. This is particularly true, when you want a report or functional assessment from your doctor. SSA rarely sends for reports or functional assessments from your treating doctors. You can expect SSA to only make minimal effort in getting your medical records. Take it upon yourself to make sure you have all the favorable evidence from your doctors that you need to win your case. Second, every stage of the process is an opportunity for you to win your case so do not take any of the stages for granted. If you have done alot of research you will know that the denial rate at the reconsideration stage is anywhere between 80 and 90%. However, the main reason for this high denial rate, in my opinion is, because most people do not add any new medical evidence between getting their first denial and their decision at reconsideration. When you get your denial at application it will tell you what medical records they have reviewed. Look at this evidence and see what medical evidence they did not have when they made this first decision. Now that you know what is missing you can take it upon yourself to go out and get this evidence. Third, if you are at the hearing stage it can take anywhere from one to two years and sometimes more to get a hearing. You will get a copy of your file at this stage of the process. Take the opportunity to review your file and see why they have denied your claim. Also, review the medical evidence and determine what might be missing from the file that could help you win. As soon as you have all the evidence in that proves your case, you may give yourself a chance to win before you even have a hearing date. The hearing offices have recently begun doing a more comprehensive prescreening of cases at hearing. I have found a significant increase in cases being won at the hearing stage before a hearing. If your case is particularly strong you can request a prehearing fully favorable decision. This is best done with the help of a lawyer who can send in a brief as to why you should be granted a fully favorable decision on the record without need for hearing. If you have a lawyer you can ask them to do this for you, but it is usually only done when the lawyer feels the case is very strong and all the evidence is in. This is because if a lawyer did this on every case the hearing office would simply ignore them. If a lawyer is selective and only chooses to do this for cases that have a high probability of success the hearing office will give strong consideration to those cases sent in by the attorney.

This post is another update to some recent changes made to the website. I was reviewing my website and realized that I do not have a page on Social Security disability and cancer. Quite an oversight by me. So I added a page that explains how Social Security handles these types of cases. You can find this new page by clicking on other medical conditions in the navigation bar and then clicking on cancer. You will find a link to the appropriate medical listings of impairments section and a list of the cancers on Social Security's compassionate allowance list which allows for a much quicker favorable determination for those who have a cancer on that list. I have not had as much time as I would like to finish updating the statistics for all the states on denial rates and wait times. But I will be getting to this in the near future. I also have a Social Security disability conference coming up and will post anything that may be of interest to you that I learn while attending. I will also be working on some new pages for my website with the focus on specific medical conditions and how they are handled in SSDI and SSI cases. As always, if there is any subjects you would like to see covered in my website that you cannot find feel free to send me an e-mail and suggest any topics.