The Four medical professionals blackballed by ALJ Dan R. Hyatt
because they "might" find a claimant disabled. 


After Ph.D. Burns was told that he had been "blackballed" by Hyatt because he "finds claimants disabled", Dr. Burns wrote this letter to point out that on average he finds more claimants NOT DISABLED than disabled.  
Apparently, Dan Hyatt wants a consultative examiner to ONLY find that claimants are not disabled.
 
Dan R. Hyatt blackballs psychologists who might find a claimant disabled from doing an examination for Social Security. click here
Read Dr. Burn's defense of his profession and himself, BELOW.

Caleb Burns, Ph.D
 

Psychologist, Portland-Gresham, 1987 to present.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: B.A., Claremont Men's College, 1972; Ph.D. in Psychology, University of Hawaii, 1984

BLACKBALLED BY
SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGE
DAN R. HYATT
FORBIDDEN FROM SERVING CLAIMANTS AND THE GOVERNMENT TO ASSESS MENTAL IMPAIRMENTS

Leslie Pitchford, Ph.D
Leslie Pitchford is a licensed Psychologist with over 25 years experience.

Leslie received her doctorate in Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1980. She has worked in hospital settings, private industry and private practice. She was first licensed in New York and then in California

BLACKBALLED BY
SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGE
DAN R. HYATT
FORBIDDEN FROM SERVING CLAIMANTS AND THE GOVERNMENT TO ASSESS MENTAL IMPAIRMENTS

Meharg

Stephen Meharg, Ph.D

A Longview-Kelso native, Dr. Meharg completed his doctorate in clinical psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology in 1990. After a final year of training in medical psychology at the Portland VA Medical Center, Dr. Meharg joined Dr. deVidal in private practice. Dr. Meharg has varied interests. In addition to a general practice in child and adult psychotherapy, he holds specialty practices in the evaluation and treatment of ADHD, child behavior disorders, parent training, clinical neuropsychology, and behavior therapy of anxiety disorders. He consults extensively with area medical providers.

Dr. Meharg has also served as adjunct faculty at George Fox College and Lower Columbia College, and is a consulting psychologist at St John Medical Center and is board certified by the American College of Forensic Examiners.

BLACKBALLED BY
SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGE
DAN R. HYATT
FORBIDDEN FROM SERVING CLAIMANTS AND THE GOVERNMENT TO ASSESS MENTAL IMPAIRMENTS

Linda Conaway, Ph.D

has many years of experience helping individuals who are facing challenges in their lives due to medical problems.
She has the skills to assess patients who may be having cognitive problems subsequent to strokes, heart attacks, head injuries and dementia.

BLACKBALLED BY
SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGE
DAN R. HYATT
FORBIDDEN FROM SERVING CLAIMANTS AND THE GOVERNMENT TO ASSESS MENTAL IMPAIRMENTS

actual Order from ALJ Dan R. Hyatt blackballing

This standard order from ALJ Dan R. Hyatt was received by Oregon State Bar Reporter anonymously but it comports with the several identical orders that a reporter for Oregon State Bar Reporter has seen and handled.

Other

Caleb Burns statement after learning that he was being blackballed by ALJ Dan R. Hyatt

OCCUPATION: Clinical Psychologist

OCCUPATIONAL BACKGROUND: Psychologist, Portland-Gresham, 1987 to present.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: B.A., Claremont Men's College, 1972; Ph.D. in Psychology, University of Hawaii, 1984.

Dear Attorney Daniel A. Bernath:

I have been told by a variety of agency representatives that they prefer my reports to others, and WOU has said my reports are unsurpassed in terms of background information, activities of daily living, and other important factors they consider. WOU has also said that my report information helps with setting the record for Social Security considerations and they have encouraged me to continue to be complete in my reports.
 

I sent out feedback letters fairly often to referral sources to ask how my reports meet their needs and the comments have been uniformly positive.

My reports are considerably longer than the average report but I endeavor to include all important relevant information. As an ethical psychologist, I can do no less.  For example, if I am asked to comment on the cognitive functioning on an individual, then unless I have performed at least some simple screening (perhaps the Reading subtest of the WRAT-3, or several subtests of the WAIS-III) I will not conclude that the person is presenting without cognitive impairment.  To do so would be to reach a conclusion not based on data and that certainly could result in mistreatment of the claimant.  (It is often the case that impaired people present superficially as very intact.  Similarly, people who may present as impaired are oftentimes quite high-functioning.)

Though continued education, reading, and ongoing consultation with others, I keep current on the important matters related to my specialty.  (For example, last Friday I attended a seminar on diagnosing via the DSM-IV-TR and on Saturday I attended a conference on brain injury hosted by the Brain Injury Association of Oregon.)

I noted to you that I had performed previously an examination of a number of claimants to determine how many of them I had found disabled.

As a result of a phone inquiry, on May 25, 1999, I examined on my computer all of the reports that I had written since January 1999 in which my views regarding disability from work was asked of me.  As of May 25, there were 147 reports, these performed for Disability Services of Oregon, AFS.  Of those, 68 led me to state that the claimant was disabled for 12 months because of psychological problems and 79 were found by me to be not disabled from a psychological perspective,.

Therefore, the total rate at which I found people to be disabled from this population for that five month period was 46 percent or less than half.

Further, I examined the rate at which I found people to have a GAF scale of 49 or lower and a review of my reports over the five months ending May 25, 1999 showed that I have found 68 people to have GAF's 49 or lower and 76 to have GAF's above 49.  (I was unable to estimate GAF's on several claimants.)  Therefore, 53 percent of the claimants for whom I could determine a GAF had GAFs of 50 or higher. This is more than half of those who were sent to me for an evaluation.

So in general summary, more than half of those evaluated by me that five month period (and I have reason to think that that five month period was nonrepresentative of my usual evaluation outcomes) were not found to be disabled by me, and more than half of that group of claimants had GAF scores of 50 or higher.

I certainly subscribe to the ethical guidelines of my profession and am motivate to do the very best that I can in terms of providing accurate an complete evaluations of those clients sent to me.  I very often seek corollary information from family members and others, seek the input of physicians and others, etc.  Further, I often make home visits or see claimants in a wide variety of locates outside my office.

I close each report with the following general words: "Thank you for this very interesting evaluation.  If you have any questions or comments (or if you have any information which may cause me to modify my diagnoses of this client), please do not hesitate to contact me."  I mean that paragraph fully and am please3d when people do contact me with additional information, some of which certainly can change my diagnostic impressions.

Feel free to share this information with whomever you wish. 

I certainly would be willing to discuss this matters more completely in any venue at all.  Just set the time and place and I will be happy to attend. 

(I am a proponent of the view that exposure is the best antiseptic).

Yours,

Caleb Burns, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist

 

 

Dan R.Hyatt
is a member of the Oregon Bar. 
He must be a member of the bar to be eligible to be an administrative law judge. 
He currently is employed by the Social Security Administration as an administrative law judge out of the Portland Oregon ODAR.

Official Documents--Dan Hyatt takes "government property, has a problem with interracial couples", exposes secret social security numbers to strangers of claimants, calls an attorney "an asshole", calls another attorney "a moron", Dan Hyatt is a "bald faced liar", misrepresents that he is a US District Court judge, uses intimidation, anger and verbal abuse against helpless Social Security disabled claimants, threatens disabled US veteran with assault, say privileged documents.


The following are complaints to the Oregon State Bar
or other privileged documents: