Good management control of the agency's medical-vocational development criteria means that procedures should be clearly written, current, easily available and uniformly applied. Periodically, management should check to see if medical or vocational development procedures are well written, effective and are being followed. Where a procedure is not working or not followed, management should review the situation and take appropriate action.

DDS management, through regularly scheduled aged case and elapsed processing time reviews, should assure that timely development and followup actions are taken so that the agency can achieve acceptable accuracy and processing time performance levels.

The following procedures, therefore, should be carefully controlled in order to achieve desired results. These guides should be understood by all staff with regular followup by supervisors.

1. 1. 

   Initial Development

   1. a. 

      Timeframe for requesting evidence

   2. b. 

      Method of development

   3. c. 

      Maintenance of developmental action

   4. d. 

      Followups

2. 2. 

   Interaction with DO's

3. 3. 

   Contact with the claimant

4. 4. 

   Method of access to State agency medical consultants

5. 5. 

   Consultative exam process

   1. a. 

      Unproductive/uncooperative medical sources

   2. b. 

      Decision to order a C/E

   3. c. 

      Method of approving C/E request

   4. d. 

      Scheduling and making pre/post followups of C/E appointments

   5. e. 

      Followup on missed C/E's and on C/E reports

   6. f. 

      Quality review of C/E reports

These and other procedures should be formalized agency wide. Regular supervisory review should reveal whether the procedures are being followed. A breakdown in procedures will normally result in lost processing time or decreased quality and should be promptly remedied.