Faster Benefit Approval

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Regardless of the type of disability benefits that are sought, the claimant must have a doctor who is willing to support the claimant’s inability to work. A corollary is that the more doctors a claimant has who are willing to support the claimant’s inability to work, the faster the application usually gets approved.

A couple of days ago, a Social Security Disability (“SSD”) application I submitted was approved without ever being denied. The claimant’s impairments were typical – neck, back, knee and wrist problems. Because the claimant did not have a very long work history, she was concerned about being approved at all.

The claimant had a spine specialist who fully supported the claimant’s application with treatment records, diagnostic test results and a disability assessment. Many people submit the same type of evidence yet their applications get denied. This requires the claimant to spend more time through the various levels of appeals, securing more reports from and records from doctors, before the application gets approved. The delay can cause financial hardship, and there is no interest for delayed receipt of benefits.

In this case, as well as virtually every case, I advised the claimant to secure supporting evidence from another one of her doctors to corroborate the spine specialist’s findings and conclusions. Because the claimant had only been seeing the spine specialist, in light of her impairments, I advised her to start treating with an arthritis specialist. Eventually, the claimant obtained a disability assessment from the arthritis specialist, and it concurred with that of the spine specialist.

Considering that most SSD applications are denied initially, I believe that this particular claimant’s application was approved from the outset because of the corroborative evidence from the second medical source. My experience has repeatedly shown that absent corroborating medical evidence, an SSD application will not be approved initially unless the situation involves an impairment that simply requires proof that the condition exists, such as blindness or paralysis.

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