Three years after Administrative Law Judge hearings were transferred from the Social Security Administration to HHS (as mandated under the Medicare Modernization Act), a follow-up report from the Office of Inspector General said it found no problems. Shortly after the transfer, which took place in July 2005, a report from the GAO criticized HHS for limited access to in-person hearings and said the system was suffering staffing shortages and had not yet fully implemented a case-tracking system. At the time, HHS had only four in-person hearing sites versus 141 under the SSA. In place of the in-person hearings, however, HHS said it would use videoconferencing for most appeals (see GAO Report Raises New ALJ Transfer Concerns, HomeCare, September 2005).
The OIG report, issued Jan. 26, compared the first and third years of operation for the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals — which handles the third level of Medicare's administrative appeals process — and found during the time period OMHA's caseload increased 37 percent, from 20,676 to 28,361 cases. The report also said OMHA had improved the timeliness of its decisions. For cases with a 90-day decision requirement, OMHA decided 94 percent on time in its third year compared to 85 percent in its first year of operation. For cases without the 90-day requirement, the OIG said OMHA decided 90 percent within six months compared with 88 percent in its first year. OMHA also improved the quality of data in the appeals system, OIG said.