Indiana Social Security Disability Attorney

The Indianapolis ODAR is again transferring disability cases to other offices. We just got a batch of notices for several cases. The notices state that the case will still be heard in Indianapolis, but that it will be assigned to another judge in another office. We now have clients with their cases in Illinois and Arizona.

I recently posted that Indianapolis had dropped from 144th place out of 147 to 147th out of 147 (now the worst in the nation) with an average processing time of 896 days from the time of the filing of the Request for Hearing. Yesterday I posted on the Congressional Subcommittee that will be holding hearings to examine SSA’s management of its hearing offices and to explore measures that can be taken to improve productivity.

The hope is that by transferring cases from an Indianapolis judge to a judge in another office that  the cases will be heard sooner than if they stayed here with our Indianapolis Judges. Time will tell if this is how things really work out. There have been times in the past where cases where transferred out to other judges and by the time the case was heard and decided, no time was really saved.

Also, out of town judges are not familiar with our local physicians and hospitals and the way they do things. This can sometimes make a difference in how the out of town judge views the medical care that a claimant receives or the medical evidence. For example, if Doctor X is recognized in the local community as being THE expert on heart conditions to which all other doctors defer and the judge does not know this, the judge might not give as much importance to Doctor X’s opinion as he/she otherwise would if the Judge lived here and knew about Doctor X. In some cases, this could be very important.

The notice is not clear if the judge will actually travel here to Indianapolis or if the Judge will do the hearing by Video. Unless SSA has made improvements to the video equipment that it used in the past, I can not recommend video hearings. I had one client that was desperate for a hearing and the medical evidence was very, very strong. She could not wait any longer and we did a video hearing. The quality of the picture was so poor that if I had to pick out of a line up the judge that conducted the hearing, I would have to guess as I could not clearly see her features. I have been told that the more technically inclined judges can figure out how to control the camera at their end and adjust the focus and can zoom in to see the cliamant—I just have no way of knowing if that judge I have never seen before has the technical expertise to adjust the equipment so that the judge can really see my client. The picture is not “high definition TV” quality. I was not impressed. Some attorneys love it.

Indianapolis still needs more judges and support staff. Hopefully SSA can find the money to hire both for our Indianapolis hearing office. All of our Indianapolis hearing office employees are working as hard as they can. Hopefully this transferring of cases will benefit the claimants by causing their hearings to be heard sooner than if the case was left with our judges.