Social Security sets up Extended Service Teams
Social security commissioner, for the first time in 2010 declared the setting up of the agency’s primary Extended Service Team (EST) in Little Rock, Arkansas. The EST has been set up primarily to take over disability decision making authority from state Disability Determination Services (DDSs). This is because these DDSs are flooded by initial disability claims as a result of economic downturn and counterproductive employee layoffs in every state. During the course of the year, additional ESTs have been designated to open at Virginia, Roanoke, Mississippi, Madison and Oklahoma City. If you have observed, these ESTs have been set up in cities that have a history of high productivity and quality and also the capability to hire as well as train substantial number of additional employees.
Every EST has a unique strategy based on which their success lies. They draw their inspiration and similarities in operations from National Hearing Centers. Here, electronic operations are made use of to process cases from all across the country. Such centralized units help in bringing down hearing backlogs and have also tremendously bettered processing times at offices that are badly hit from claim traffic. The success of this approach has paved way to setting up and operating an EST in every major state or area.
Rationale behind setting up ESTs
The Social Security Administration is expecting to receive over 3.3 million applications seeking disability benefits for the fiscal year 2010. This is a number that is at least 700,000 over the number received in 2008. Also, it has been observed that the economic decline in the country has paved way for numerous states to layoff state workers who are federally funded. With a substantial increase in state layoffs and workloads, it is but logical for the number of cases in state DDSs to catapult. Also, it has been said that the SSA, today has only 75 percent of employees than it had 25 years earlier. Hence, the establishment of ESTs becomes justified.
These ESTs do not just help disabled workers as well as their families but also help in creating state wise new employment opportunities especially during difficult times. These ESTs help in making determination of disability both at the initial as well as reconsideration levels. An EST offers support in two ways:
(1) They assist states for the process of initial disability claims. This also includes those that hold the laid off status.
(2) They help in creating new federally funded job opportunities for nearly 333 Americans.
These ESTs are not just established in states that do not have a DDS for processing disability claims but also offer additional staff capacity in states where established federal units such as DDS exist. The person behind setting up these extended service teams is Michael J. Astrue who is the current Commissioner of Social Security. This venture by the current commissioner has been considered to be steadfast that has been approached with diligent forecast and precision. The imperative need to help more and more Americans is the reason for setting up these teams.
