How Medical Treatment Impacts your Claim and How to Find Low-Cost Free Treatment Locations

A critical aspect of a social security claim is the submission of medical records for the Social Security Administration to review. These medical records are used to support the existence of your impairments that are stopping you from working. Generally, the Social Security Administration needs all of the records that have been made from the date you alleged you became disabled up to the present, with more weight being placed on objective medical findings, such as imaging or diagnostic testing, in order to find you disabled. However, you may have issues in developing a medical record due to the cost. MRIs, X-rays, pulmonary function tests, and other diagnostic tests and tools aren’t cheap to use or perform.

While the Social Security Administration can and will require you to go to their doctors for the purpose of a consultative examination, these examinations can only take you so far, and may not adequately show how disabling your impairments really are. They only give a snapshot of your health on that specific day. The question then is, how can I find low-cost or free treatment locations, so that I can have a medical record for Social Security to review?

The US Department of Health and Human Services have a number of resources that can help you locate clinics and treatment centers in your community. Low-cost clinics can be found in your area at https://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/.

Additionally, you should see if your state has low cost or free insurance options, which are generally available to low-income families or individuals and are accepted at most medical providers and hospitals. Many states have expanded the eligibility standards for Medicaid, and if you live in a state that has not, you still may qualify if your income is below the federal poverty level of $13,590 for an individual.

By: Devon Brady of Premier Disability Services, LLC®

Five Reasons Social Security Disability Hearings Are Better by Phone Than In Person

Social Security Disability hearings with administrative law judges (ALJs) are—no doubt—stressful events. You’re ill and you must explain to a judge why you can’t work full-time. In my thirty years in front of these judges at thousands of hearings, the gravity of these hearings has not escaped me.

When COVID hit, Social Security shifted from in-person hearings to phone hearings. Social Security still mostly holds phone hearings. This decision is wise given that disabled people can have compromised immune systems.

Social Security does allow you to postpone your disability hearing if you’d prefer to conduct it in person. Asking for an in-person hearing, however, means indefinite delay. If you want your Social Security hearing soon, a phone or video hearing is presently the only option. Most ALJs and attorneys currently work from home, doing phone hearings and some video hearings.

After doing phone hearings for over a year into the pandemic, I believe phone hearings and video hearings from home have five advantages over in-person hearings.

1. Phone hearings require no travel. In-person hearings require travel to hearing locations, sometimes hours away. They also raise questions about getting a ride, bad travel weather, having money for gas, and finding parking. Phone hearings have none of these issues.
2. Phone hearings are less stressful. At times, my clients have had great difficulty finding hearing sites and getting through security. After sitting in a crowded waiting room, some of my clients could not settle in and focus during their Social Security hearings. Phone hearings let you stay home without the distractions of a new location.
3. Phone hearings require less planning. Before in-person hearings, many of my clients asked me these kinds of questions: “What do I wear?” “Do I look at the judge?” “Where am I supposed to sit?” “What if I cry?” Phone hearings reduce or eliminate many of these concerns.
4. Phone hearings are more practical. Some of my clients have significant difficulty getting through a grocery store or up steps. For these clients, getting into a building, a waiting room, and then into a small hearing room was almost impossible. Phone hearings don’t require a certain level of mobility.
5. Phone hearings are fairer. In my experience, ALJs are not good at deciding if my clients “look” disabled or not. ALJs would question my clients about why their canes did not appear worn or how they could sit in the hearing for an hour without getting up. Phone hearings (and at-home video hearings) allow ALJs to focus on the testimony, not appearances.

While in-person hearings are available again, they will likely remain optional. For the above reasons, I usually recommend that my clients request to appear by phone.

If you need any assistance in filing your disability claim, please contact our office today!

What Is Social Security’s Work History Report

You can improve your chances of getting disability benefits by providing a detailed work history to the Social Security Administration (SSA). The Social Security claims examiner will use the information you provide on the Work History Report (Form SSA-3368) to determine what kind of work you can still do.

Why Your Employment History Is Important

It’s important to include as much detail as you can about each job you had so that the claims examiner gets a clear picture of the following:

Job description: your job titles, the specific tasks you performed, the skills needed to do the job, and the work environment.

Physical requirements: how much you had to walk, stand, climb, sit, lift, and carry; how much you had to kneel, bend, stoop, and crawl; and how you used your hands.

Challenges you faced on the job: extra help you needed to perform your work duties, and if you had to reduce your work hours due to your medical condition, or take frequent sick days or rest breaks.

Your medical condition’s effect on your ability to perform the job: including how your medical condition affected your job performance, when you had to stop work, and why you had to stop.

How to Fill Out the Work History Report

The work history form asks for your job history over the past 15 years, with space for you to list up to 10 jobs. List every paid job you had—even part-time work. The work history report includes a separate page for each job you listed, where you’ll share the details of the job, including:

• your job title
• your pay rate
• hours you worked per day
• your job description (everything you did each day)
• specific job skills needed
• physical requirements (like how long you needed to stand or how much you had to lift and how often), and
• whether you had a manager role.

Be sure to provide accurate contact information for past supervisors. The claims examiner might need to call them to discuss the demands of a particular position you’ve listed on your work history, as well as any specific skill sets you might or might not have gained.

How Social Security Will Use Your Work History

The claims examiner will look closely at the requirements of your prior jobs to see if you should be able to return to one of them or if your impairment prevents you from doing each job. If the examiner doesn’t know the true requirements of each job you had, the examiner might think you’re able to do a job when you’re not.

If the disability examiner agrees you can’t do your prior work, he or she will next look at your age, education, and prior skills to see if you can learn any other work. To do this, the examiner must know what job skills you gained from previous jobs. Without a detailed work history, a disability examiner has to guess at the tasks associated with prior jobs.

For example, if you were a secretary 10 years ago, the examiner could assume that you can type 65 wpm and could find other jobs you could do that require this skill. You don’t want the claims examiner to assume you have skills you don’t. If the examiner knows you don’t have certain skills, the jobs the SSA would assume you can do would be much more limited.

That’s why it’s important to describe in detail what your work was like at each job.

Please contact our office for a free evaluation!