Our Opinion: Disability claim time reduced

Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue was in Atlanta this month with promising news for Georgians waiting to resolve disability claims with his agency.

The average time to settle a disability claim in the downtown Atlanta office has been reduced drastically, he said. On average, such claims are now handled in just 500 days.

Of course, that’s still much too long for people who may be unable to work and generate income, and Astrue concedes as much. But just two years ago the average wait for resolution was 900 days.

The situation was brought to public attention last summer through stories in the Journal-Constitution.

Claimants appealing adverse decisions on disability were waiting years to have their appeals decided before Social Security administrative law judges, a situation that helped earn Atlanta the moniker “backlog capital of the country.”

One disability attorney told the newspaper that it wasn’t uncommon for claimants to die before their appeals were heard. From his office in Baltimore, Astrue took note.

“There was a bad situation here,” Astrue recently told the AJC.

Astrue lobbied for funds to hire more hearing officers and authorized a third field office for metro Atlanta.

The south Atlanta office will open in Covington in 2010, and should further ease the backlog of cases in the region.

“We should be able to take Atlanta off life support some time next year,” he said.

Astrue, whose six-year term expires in 2013, is also pushing his agency to streamline the hearing process by moving more records to digital formats.

His five-year goal is to have all Social Security field offices disposing of cases in an average of 270 days, a processing time that only one of the agency’s 142 hearing offices currently meets.

Astrue will have to keep his attention focused on the problem if he wants to achieve those goals. But he’s demonstrated that he’s up to the task.

• Ken Foskett, for the editorial board (kfoskett@ajc.com).