The wheels of justice grind slowly — and now will be even slower when it comes to Administrative Law Judge decisions.
You may have to wait an extra two years or more to get your requested hearing in front of an ALJ, the HHS Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals warns on its website. "Due to record re-ceipt levels, we are currently projecting an 18 to 22 week delay in entering (‘docketing’) new requests into our case processing system," OMHA says. "Based on our current workload and volume of new requests, we anticipate that assignment of your request for hearing to an Administrative Law Judge may be delayed for up to 28 months."
Timeline: "The average processing time for appeals decided in fiscal year 2014 is 301.7 days," OMHA adds.