Summary: The Social Security Administration (SSA) is required to conduct periodic examinations, called continuing disability reviews, to determine whether the health of a person receiving disability benefits has improved to the point where the person is no longer considered disabled. Together, the disability insurance and the supplemental security income programs pay about $60 billion annually to 9 million disabled beneficiaries; another 1.6 million nondisabled dependents of beneficiaries also receive benefits. GAO's analysis of persons awaiting such reviews supports SSA's contention that there is little chance that a large proportion of beneficiaries will show enough medical improvement to no longer be considered disabled. As a result, if SSA is to decrease long-term reliance on these programs as the primary source of income for the severely impaired, it will need to rely less on assessing medical improvement and more on return-to-work programs to better gauge the potential for self-sufficiency. GAO believes that a more cost-effective approach to conducting reviews might involve (1) focusing on beneficiaries with the greatest likelihood of benefit termination because of medical improvement, (2) reviewing a random sample of all other beneficiaries to correct a weakness in SSA's process, and (3) contacting beneficiaries not selected for a review or a financial eligibility redetermination to strengthen program integrity.
