Significant Delays in Issuance of Decisions by Hearing Offices

For years now disability claimants have had to wait an average of 15 months from the date they actually file a request for hearing before a social security judge until the actual date set for the hearing. Now, adding insult to injury, it has begun taking 4-6 months after a hearing to get the judge’s written decision. Why? Mainly due to a lack of decision writers. What is a decision writer? When the judge has made his\her decision, it is sent to the decision writing staff at the hearing office to put it into SSA’s approved decision format. Once written up it is sent back to the judge for final review and signing before it is mailed out to the claimant. Apparently there is not a sufficient number of decision writers to handle the work load, so cases wait in line for months to actually get to a decision writer.
The reason for the shortage in decision writers is a product of the number of cases as well as the hiring freeze currently in effect at the Federal level of our government. The hearing offices in Georgia and South Carolina have been attempting to alleviate the delay by sending decided cases needing to be written up from their hearing office to other hearing offices with less of a work load. This has been the situation since at least December of 2017 and it appears, absent a drop in the number of cases going to hearing, or the hiring of additional decision writers, it will remain this way for the foreseeable future.