Report Summary
Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General

September 2009

Controls Over Title XVI Immediate Payments
(A-04-09-19104)


Objective

To evaluate the adequacy of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) controls over the issuance of Title XVI immediate payments and determine whether the payments were properly recorded on the Supplemental Security Record and subsequently offset against future benefits.

Background

The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program allows immediate payments to be issued at local field offices for SSI recipients who have a financial emergency involving an immediate concern to the individual’s health or safety. SSA field offices issue immediate payments when payments through the Department of the Treasury cannot be requested or would not be fast enough. An immediate payment is an advance of an SSI payment due the recipient and must be recovered.

To view the full report, visit http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/A-04-09-19104.pdf

Our Findings

SSA did not always maintain required documentation for the 50 Title XVI immediate payments reviewed.  Specifically, field offices could not provide copies of Form SSA-8102, Advance Payment Receipt and Notice, and/or third-party drafts for
14 (28 percent) of the 50 cases reviewed.

Despite the missing documentation, SSA properly recorded the 50 immediate payments on the Supplemental Security Record and subsequently recovered the payments from the SSI recipients.  We also noted that none of the immediate payments in our sample was more than the maximum allowed $999 or the amount due the beneficiary.

Our Recommendation

We recommended that SSA issue a reminder to field offices to ensure they maintain all required documentation for Title XVI immediate payments.

SSA agreed with our recommendation.