The complaints abound, and continue to exponentially increase; the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is way behind on its evaluation, review and decision-making process for all characters of retirements, disability retirements included.
It is a given that filing for Federal or Postal Disability Retirement, whether under FERS or CSRS, with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, must necessarily have an expectation of a time-consuming administrative process, precisely because of the encounter with a Federal bureaucracy. But it seems that each year — nay, each month and week — the delays continue to expand.
At each step of the way, OPM has become more and more unresponsive, and with new cases coming in, the length of time at every stage, and “between” stages, has been extended. The process itself contains inherent milestones of delay: from filing the entire disability retirement application to a facility in Boyers, Pennsylvania, which merely annotates the receipt of the case and inputs the case into the computer system; to thereafter sending the disability retirement application, with all of its evidentiary submissions and attachments down to Washington, D.C., where it must first await assignment to a caseworker; then, upon assignment, for the caseworker to even get to the applicant’s submission for review and evaluation. Then, of course, there is the possibility that the entire packet will be selected to be sent out for review by a contract doctor.
The delays are beyond the control of the applicant, his or her OPM Disability attorney, or the agency for whom the applicant worked. It is, ultimately, an administrative process which can be tedious, time-consuming, and fraught with delays and extended periods of silence.
Patience may well be a virtue, but the unresponsive manner in which the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has handled the delays, fails to engender much confidence in a system which should be most responsive to those in greater need.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Important Cases, Legal Updates and/or the Current Process Waiting Time | Tagged: anxiety of waiting for fers disability retirement, being patient while waiting for fers disability, Checking the status on an OPM Disability Application, civil service disability, contacting the opm for disability application status, contacting the opm representative who is handling your disability retirement is difficult but not impossible, delaying after delaying your federal disability retirement application, endless waiting for the opm to process disability application, enduring a medical condition and waiting for a federal disability retirement decision from the opm, expect further opm delays in opm disability decision making, expecting more delays on your opm disability retirement decision, federal disabled employees and the patience needed, FERS medical retirement, further delays for the opm to evaluate federal disability retirement -- with and without sequestration, getting an answer from the opm about your fers or csrs disability retirement application status, learning about the federal disability retirement process, maintaining a courteous voice when contacting the opm, many factors can cause delays for a medical disability decision under fers or csrs, one of the important issues you should consider before filing for opm disability retirement benefits, OPM disability lawyer, owcp disability retirement, patience while waiting the opm to process disability approval, Postal Service disability, realistic expectations about it times it may take to get your opm disability retirement application approved, the medical disability retirement process and the patience needed, the most complete blog on federal disability retirement, time processing considerations when planning to go through the federal disability retirement process, understanding why it may takes and even years to get a federal employee disability benefits application approved, USPS Disability |
Leave a Reply