The SSA has issued its self-review of its performance in handling and processing of disability claims for the past year; but only through October 2008.

The SSA reports that it now has the second highest number of cases pending review.  At the end of October 2008 there were 766,905 unresolved claims waiting at the SSA for processing.

The SSA reported that "only" 281 claims were left that have been waiting more than 900 days for processing. However, more than 165,000 claims remain to be processed by the SSA after being on the shelf without workup for more than 850 days.

The SSA reports that it has only hired 62 additional judges to hear claims and due to budget restrictions, will not likely hire any more judges until late 2009.  The US Congress has cut the budget requested by the SSA to operate  for the next 6 months by $300 million and will likely cut the SSA operating budget another $300 million the next 6 months as well.  The loss of $600 million to the SSA operate will undoubtedly causes significant and mounting delays in the processing of disability claims.

The SSA noted that it uses the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) to determine whether or not a claimant can perform other jobs and thus is not disabled and not entitled to benefits.  However the DOT has not been updated by the federal government since 1991.  As such, the SSA and federal government continue to rely on jobs that no longer exist; such as "elevator operator", or rely on obsolete job descriptions such as describing a computer operator as a person who physically loads tapes on to computers and flips switches on and off to operate computers.  The SSA estimates that another 5 years will pass before the DOT may be considered for updating, by then however, once again the DOT will be out of date.

The SSA is considering the use of enhanced video hearings that would allow representatives and their clients to "attend" disability hearings from the privacy of the representative's own office through desktop video.  Use of this program would allow clients and representatives to attend hearings without the need to travel to inconvenient SSA offices only to wait for hours.  This proposal is only being considered by SSA with no real nationwide use yet.

The SSA reported that the average processing time for a disability claim from initial application to administrative hearing was 476 days.  The fastest claims processing SSA office was Mayaguez, Puerto Rico which came in at 146 days.  The slowest processing SSA office was Madison Wisconsin at 712 days.

The SSA reported that in 20 hearing offices, more than 1 out of 10 scheduled disability hearings are remand hearings: cases that were previously denied disability but later overruled on appeals and returned to the hearing offices for a rehearing.  And in 2 hearing offices, McAlester Oklahoma and San Bernardino California, more than 15.5 percent of waiting hearings were actually remands; indicating an even higher number of wrong decisions being handed out by those particular SSA hearing office judges.  The average waiting time for a claimant to have his case reheard by the SSA following a court ordered remand was another 369 days. 

The SSA reported that there were approximately 2,100 remands claims waiting more than 1,000 days for a hearing.  Of those claims, 10 claims were noted to have been waiting up to 1,839 days for the SSA to schedule a hearing.  In one disability remand claim the SSA noted it took the SSA over 400 days simply to assign the case to an office clerk.