How Long Does It Take to Get a Disability Decision After a Consultative Exam?

As part of the disability decision making process, applicants are often asked to attend a consultative examination (CE) at Social Security’s expense. Typically, CEs are ordered by staff at Disability Determination Services, a state agency that makes the original decision on your claim and reviews appeals of initial denials.

Consultative exams usually occur in the middle of either the initial application stage or the reconsideration review stage. So it’s likely that you’ll get a letter informing you of your scheduled CE appointment within a few months after you’ve first applied for benefits or requested reconsideration.

The doctor who conducts the CE is asked to write a report and send it to Disability Determination Services within 10 business days of the exam. Then, claims examiners will need to review the CE report and assess how the doctor’s opinion about your limitations fits in the context of your medical records as a whole. This can take some time.

It’s not always easy to estimate how long it takes to get a decision after a CE since there are a number of variables that differ from case to case. The doctor might not submit the report on time, for example, or the report results might be wildly different from what the claims examiner sees in the rest of your medical records. If more investigation is needed, you might be sent to another CE, which can delay a decision by months.

Internal factors at Disability Determination Services can also slow down your decision. Your claim may get caught up in technical review while a supervisor makes sure that your claims examiner dotted all their “i”s and crossed all their “t”s. Or your file may be sent to the agency’s quality control branch, where your decision is reviewed for legal accuracy.

Most claimants are scheduled for a CE when their application is at the state agency, but some people make it to the hearing level without having ever attended a CE. In these cases, an administrative law judge can ask you to go to a CE after you’ve already been to a disability hearing. The judge won’t issue a decision until the doctor’s report from your CE is submitted to the hearing office, which can mean waiting for several more months to know if you’ve been approved.

Sometimes the judge will want you to come back for an additional hearing—called a “supplemental hearing”— if the information contained in the CE report isn’t enough to reach a legally sound conclusion. Unsurprisingly, this will delay your decision further. Supplemental hearings aren’t that common, however, and are usually reserved for the most complex cases.