We all know that the wait to have your disability case decided is too long. Fortunately, Social Security is introducing programs to try to speed up the process, and reduce the backlog of cases awaiting decisions.
Social Security issued a final rule on September 5, 2007 extending nationwide its Quick Disability Determination (QDD) process. Under QDD, a predictive model analyzes specific elements of data within the electronic claims file to identify claims where there is a high potential that the claimant is disabled and where evidence of the person’s allegations can be quickly and easily obtained. … Arizona, New Jersey and North Dakota have started using QDD as part of a staged national roll-out that will be completed early next year.
This is an interesting idea and hopefully, this will reduce wait times. However, I have some concerns.
I am not sure if this is going to help individuals with uncommon disabilities, combinations of disabilities, or limited medical treatment.
In cases of clear-cut disabilities, the QDD process may speed up the processing of cases and the pay-out of benefits. Certainly that is no small improvement.
However, those cases stand a good chance of being approved at the initial review anyway.
If you have ever gone through one (or more) applications, you may have dealt with a Social Security claims rep who did not understand what you are going through and why you are disabled. And that was a flesh and blood person. Do you think a predictive algorithm is going to be more understanding?
I am not knocking the QDD program. Anything that speeds up processing time is a welcome addition. However, on those trickier cases which require digging up old records, or obtaining narrative reports, or that just require individualized professional attention to make it clear to Social Security that an individual is disabled, I am not sure this program is going to be of much help.
