(NEXSTAR) – The Social Security Administration is grappling with a “record-breaking backlog” that could result in roughly $1.1 billion in improper payments, according to a new report by the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The OIG, which works to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of SSA’s programs, investigated both erroneous payments and so-called pending actions that were left unresolved at processing centers between fiscal years 2018 and 2023.
The longer underpayments and overpayments go uncorrected, the more mistakes are made. The average processing time for improper payments in the sample was 698 days, the OIG said.
“Customer satisfaction is an ongoing concern for SSA, and this report continues to highlight the urgent need for SSA to meet its achievement goals for pending actions and ensure beneficiaries receive their appropriate payments as quickly as possible,” said Michelle Anderson, SSA’s acting inspector general and deputy inspector general for audits.
The Social Security Administration told the OIG that the backlog of cases is due in part to unexpected staffing cuts, increased workloads and reduced overtime budgets at processing centers.
In one example, OIG found that SSA overpaid a disability benefits recipient by approximately $62,000. Although SSA only discovered the error in June 2021, and the recipient had already received an additional $9,000 over a four-month period, the administration did not take any action to recover the overpayment until May 2023. At that point, the recipient had received an additional $53,000, OIG found.
OIG found that even though SSA met its performance goals in four of the six years, the backlog of pending actions at processing centers did not decrease, but rather increased from 3.2 million in 2018 to 4.6 million in 2023. As the backlog grew, the time it took to resolve pending cases also increased, and the total amount of outstanding payments increased.
The OIG estimated that if SSA had resolved its backlog of unprocessed cases “as soon as possible,” it would have made approximately $534 million in improper payments to 528,000 beneficiaries. The failure to correct those payments for months, and in many cases for more than a year, caused the total amount of improper payments to balloon to an estimated $1.1 billion, according to the report.
Anderson said the SSA agreed with the OIG’s recommendations, which include:
- Develop workload and staffing plans to help SSA reduce its annual backlog
- Develop performance metrics with targets to reduce pending actions in processing centers
- Set deadline targets for processing centers to prevent an increase in fraudulent payments and ease burdens on recipients
In March 2024, the SSA announced it would be changing its overpayment recovery process by reducing the default monthly withholding rate from 100% to 10% (or $10, whichever is greater) to help alleviate financial hardship for beneficiaries.
Recipients who received an overpayment They also appeal for exemption from collection procedures If they think it’s not their fault and can’t repay, they will refuse to repay altogether.
