Social Security Administration November 2019 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018 (Strengthening Protections Act) requires us to promulgate regulations specifying the information Social Security beneficiaries and applicants must provide to designate a representative payee in advance of our determination that the beneficiary needs a representative payee. We propose to revise our rules to satisfy this requirement, and to specify that we will allow individuals to designate in advance one or more potential representative payees. We also explain how we propose to consider an individual's advance designation when we select a representative payee.

We propose to revise our regulations regarding when and how often we conduct continuing disability reviews (CDR), which are periodic reviews of eligibility required for benefit continuation. The proposed rules would add a category to the existing medical diary categories that we use to schedule CDRs and revise the criteria for assigning each of the medical diary categories to cases. The proposed rules would also change the frequency with which we perform a CDR for claims with the medical diary category for permanent impairments. The revised changes would ensure that we continue to maintain appropriate stewardship of the disability program and identify medical improvement (MI) at its earliest point.

In accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act, as amended, this notice announces a new matching program with the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This matching agreement establishes the terms, conditions, and safeguards under which CMS will disclose to SSA Medicare non-utilization information for Social Security Title II beneficiaries aged 90 and above. CMS will identify Medicare enrollees whose records have been inactive for three or more years. SSA will use this data as an indicator to select and prioritize cases for review to determine continued eligibility for benefits under Title II of the Social Security Act (Act). SSA will contact these individuals to verify ongoing eligibility. SSA will use this data for the purposes of fraud discovery and the analysis of fraud program operations; this agreement allows for SSA's Office of Anti-Fraud Programs (OAFP) to evaluate the data for the purposes of fraud detection. SSA will refer individual cases of suspected fraud, waste, or abuse to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for investigation.