From the American Medical Association News today: The Social Security Administration says it has already demonstrated the business value of a national health information exchange through the test run it’s doing in collaboration with MedVirginia, a regional health information exchange in central Virginia.

The two started exchanging data in February to expedite disability benefit approvals. By using the data exchange to receive medical records that can help determine eligibility for disability benefits, the SSA says the approval process has been reduced to an average of 32 days from 83 days.

A handful of cases were determined within a day of being received, said Jim Borland, special adviser for health IT for the SSA.

“That just doesn’t happen,” he said. See more here

Government Executive reports today: The economic downturn, inadequate funding and red tape are at the core of an increasing backlog of Social Security disability cases, panelists said during a roundtable discussion in Washington on Thursday.
The government has tried for years to reduce the number of cases awaiting review from administrative law judges, but the recession is a significant setback, said Alan Cohen, senior budget adviser for the Senate Finance Committee.
“Initial claims are going to skyrocket in 2010,” he said during the forum, organized by the Association of Administration Law Judges. “The tsunami hasn’t hit the administrative law judges here.”
At issue are cases where a claim has been rejected at the state level and is sent to Social Security Administration ALJs. Currently, there are about 750,000 cases pending, according to Cohen. SSA has set a goal of reducing the pile of pending cases to 466,000 by 2013 — a step SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue has told lawmakers would decrease average processing times from 500 to 270 days. See article here:

Us News and World Reports joins a host of papers today reporting “impending” doom for the Social Security Trust Fund. Of curse, the economy has taken its toll, but all in all we are OK for three decades out - then the dreaded out-of-funds date has only been moved up two years.

US News says: “The annual hair shirt report of Social Security trustees was released on Tuesday. To no one’s surprise, our national retirement and health benefit programs are headed for perdition even more quickly than they were last year. Due to the recession, the effective bankruptcy date is 2037 for what’s technically called the Old-Age and Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds. That’s four years earlier than the forecast in last year’s report — no mean feat in only one year. Program expenses exceed revenues beginning in 2016 — that’s only seven years away, folks — and all assets are exhausted 21 years later.

And this, sadly, was the good news.

As the trustees said, “Medicare’s financial status is much worse.” It’s hospital insurance component (HI) already pays out more than it takes in, and is busily eating away at its assets as we speak. That tasty meal will be done in only eight years, at which time HI reserves will be zero,nada, zilch. The Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI ) Trust Fund operates closer to break even, which is good, because it doesn’t have much in the way of assets. The bad news is that the only way it comes close to breaking even is by levying annual increases in rates that are growing faster than the economy and the incomes of the people who rely on the fund to pay for their doctors and prescription drugs.” See article here:

A few weeks ago, prolific blogger Justin Hayford at the Chicago AIDS Legal Council (http://alcc-legalpad.blogspot.com/) posted a terrific article on how to get presumptive benefits when applying for Social Security disability. This means that they give you your benefits NOW, and verify the medical records later. As you can imagine, it is reserved for serious and immediately apparent situations, but he argues it is under-used. With his permission we share it here, it has valuable information about this little-used corner of disability law:

Today’s San Jose Mercury writes that “the Social Security Disability Insurance system (SSDI) is crumbling under the pressure of a substantial disabled population, shrinking budgets and a wave of agency retirements. Social Security employees work as hard as they can to help people who deserve care, but their best efforts aren’t putting a dent in a hearing backlog of 765,000 disabled Americans — including 62,031 Californians — waiting months or years to receive their rightful benefits.

The recession is making things even worse. Commissioner Michael Astrue recently told the media the SSA is facing an unanticipated 10 percent increase in its disability claims caseload. That’s 250,000 additional cases the SSA needs to review, further bogging down the system.” See San Jose Mercury article here: