Some help may be on the way for people who have been waiting in line (in some cases for years) for an ALJ hearing. SSA is piloting having general DDS claims examiners perform informal remands. Claims chosen for this review will be those that ODAR (the hearings office) identifies as possible easy but missed allowances - generally older individuals. The claims will be returned to the DDS for reconsideration. The rules for adjudicating claims pulled for informal remand will be relaxed a bit and the decision of the DDS is not subject to their branch QA or DQB (quality assurance offices) review. If the DDS cannot make a fully favorable decision, then the claim is returned to ODAR but it does not lose its place in line for a hearing.

SSA is doing this in response to the bottlenecking of cases that is occurring at ODAR. I know that adjudicators in the Pennsylvania DDSs are currently performing the remands on cases from their state and Maryland. I do not know the extent of this elsewhere.