An interesting article in The Wall Street Journal, for those of us in the disability assessment world. Briefly, earlier this year, senior managers at the Social Security Administration in Baltimore, frustrated by a growing backlog of applications for federal disability benefits, called meetings with 140 of the agency’s doctors. The message was blunt: The number of people seeking benefits had soared. Doctors had to work faster to move cases. Instead of earning $90 an hour, as they had previously, they would receive about $80 per case—a pay cut for many cases which can take 60 to 90 minutes to review—unless the doctors worked faster. Most notably, it no longer mattered if doctors strayed far from their areas of expertise when taking a case.

So  what happened? Some doctors quit following the changes. Others were fired. In all, 45 of the 140 left within months, the agency said. The upheaval, described by current and former doctors and agency officials, is the latest strain on a cash-strapped program struggling to deal with a giant influx of applications. Read more…