Once the field office processes an initial claim for Social Security disability or SSI, the claim gets sent to DDS for a determination. DDS assigns a disability adjudicator who manages the claim. That person will order medical records, send forms to the claimant for completion, and ultimately will make a determination of whether or not that person is disabled under Social Security’s rules.
When a claim arrives at DDS, however, it is not immediately assigned to an adjudicator. A claim goes to “staging,” where the claims sit without development until they are assigned in the order they are received.
I have initial claims that are approaching 4 months in staging. Because initial claims are given priority, the staging delay for claims at Reconsideration is even longer, 6-7 months and counting.
Many DDS agencies already had a bottleneck waiting for medical review. Claims that are ready to medical review sit in the queue awaiting review from the limited number of doctors available to review the claims and assess functional limitations. Those delays are months, depending on the state.
The staging delays compound that wait for a determination. It should not take months and months to have a claim assigned to a disability adjudicator.