Use This 3-Step Process to Get Social Security Disability Benefits

The “Three-Step Process” is a method you can use to improve your chances of winning Social Security Disability benefits.

When applying for disability, it’s important to understand that Social Security is more concerned about your work limitations than your medical diagnosis.

Regardless of how severe your illness may be, if Social Security can’t see how that diagnosis affects your ability to work, they’ll deny your disability benefits.

You can find some exceptions by searching “Compassionate Allowance List” online. These are the only conditions so clearly severe that having the diagnosis is an automatic qualification for disability, though they do require proof of specific diagnostic tests.

For the most part, though, it’s important to understand that the limitations of daily functioning determine whether Social Security approves your disability benefits.

As Utah disability lawyers who have helped thousands of people, we’ll lay out the Three-Step Process for you below.

In essence, this process helps medical providers consistently document your functional limitations, increasing your chances of winning life-changing disability benefits.

Getting Disability Benefits Step 1: Share Examples of Your Limitations with Doctors.

While determining if you have a disability that qualifies for financial relief, Social Security requests medical records from your doctors. This is how they find medical evidence for your disability.

But your doctor can’t share with Social Security what they don’t know. So, you need to tell your doctors about your limitations in clear, specific terms.

The first step in the process is to share examples of your limitations in doing normal daily activities.

Here are some examples of what that might look like:

“Yesterday, I was trying to cook food on the stove when my hands started cramping, and I dropped the spatula on the floor. I couldn’t keep a grip on anything I tried to hold, so I had to turn off the stove and stop cooking food because it was just too dangerous. My hands didn’t get working right again for another hour. However, I was still too scared to start cooking again.”

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“Last week, on Wednesday, I was walking from my bedroom to the living room in my house when my legs gave out beneath me, and I fell. I hit my hip on the way down and couldn’t get up without help. I had to ice my hip for two hours and couldn’t move on my own again for another hour after that.”

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“This last week, I have been really struggling to find the motivation to do anything. I’ve been waking up at 11 a.m. but haven’t been able to get out of bed until 2 p.m. It’s not that I physically can’t, but while my brain is telling me I should, I just can’t bring myself to. Even after getting out of bed, I can’t seem to find the energy or drive to brush my teeth or change my clothes. Instead, I stay in my pajamas and, if I’m lucky, get some sort of food in me by 5 p.m. But then I’m just kind of listless until I fall asleep again at midnight. I can’t seem to find the energy or desire to actually do anything with myself.”

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“I had planned to go to the store last Saturday morning. I went really early because there usually aren’t many people there at that time. When I arrived in the parking lot, there were more cars than I expected. I started to feel anxiety about going in, so I sat in the car for a while trying to calm down. That didn’t help, and I just got more and more anxious. I had to just go home without doing my shopping that day.”

Notice that with each of these examples, the person gave a very specific day or time period. It’s important to help establish timing for your issues and limitations. Additionally, rather than focusing on your diagnosis, the focus is on how you are impaired in ways that could also impact your ability to work.

You need to share these examples with every medical provider you see, every time you see the doctor, no matter what their specialty. Every doctor, every visit, every time.

Getting Disability Benefits Step 2: Ask Doctors to Write Down the Examples You Provide.

Doctors are trained to summarize what you say and ignore stuff that is not relevant to your treatment. They are also more worried about being sued than any other group of professionals. Their default is to avoid being specific, especially about things that they think don’t matter.

It’s very important that you have a conversation with your doctor and tell them what you’re doing.

You could say, “Look Doctor, I am filing a claim for disability benefits. I need my medical records to reflect what my life is really like. That means I need you to write these examples that I’m giving you down with the details that I am giving to you.”

If your medical records don’t reflect what you tell the doctor, Social Security Disability won’t know about the examples that you shared, either.

And Social Security won’t make assumptions in your favor. For example, if your records frequently show that you have severe depression or severe pain without any specific descriptions of how those conditions affect your life, Social Security may assume you could still work despite these severe problems.

Your doctor also speaks with you a lot during your appointment and may not think to write down everything that you say in favor of getting the bigger picture. Make sure to ask your doctors to write down what you have said, so it goes in your record.

Getting Disability Benefits Step 3: Verify that Your Doctors Are Writing Down Your Examples.

There’s a possibility that you may ask your doctor to write down your examples, and for some reason, they don’t.

Remember, even though they are constantly typing on the computer, their default is not to write down details like this.

To make sure that they have added details of your everyday health limitations to your medical records, our disability attorneys recommend that at every doctor’s visit, you request your office notes from your previous visit.

Review those notes while you’re waiting to see the doctor. If there are any errors or missing information, make a note of it on the paper. When you see your doctor, point out the issues and ask them to make corrections right then.

If your medical office has an online portal, you may not have to wait until your next appointment to do this. In most of these systems, you can review records and send messages about missing information and errors to the doctor for correction. If your doctor has an online system, you can benefit by signing up for an account.

Any time the office visit notes don’t include the examples that you provided for the doctor, ask them to add that information. It’s important for Social Security to see this information.

Advice from Social Security Disability Lawyers to Make This Easier

So, you’re not just trying to remember examples when you show up at your appointment, you may want to keep a daily journal of any issues or symptoms that you notice as a part of your condition.

This can help establish specific time frames in your examples. Rather than saying “last month sometime,” you can point to a date when you had a certain issue.

As you keep your journal, you can establish a pattern of specific limitations and issues and how that might interfere with an average workday or week.

Given this, make sure to note the recovery time of any issue that you have. If you take a fall, note how long you must rest before you can get up and walk or move again. Needing significant rest or breaks definitely impacts your ability to work.

When considering what kind of examples to provide, think of the easiest job you can and consider why you would be unable to do that job on a full-time, sustained basis.

For example, someone who works at an information desk, like in a mall, doesn’t have many responsibilities, and they can sit and stand almost whenever they want.

However, they can’t lie down, take unscheduled breaks, or miss work. They also need to communicate appropriately with mall patrons and their supervisors, and they need to remember and provide accurate information.

If you have bad days with your symptoms that prevent you from working every day as scheduled, providing examples of those days to your medical providers is essential to establishing your disability benefits claim.

This Seems Like a Lot of Effort, So Why?

Like we mentioned earlier, Social Security determines disability based on your limitations and how they prevent you from working.

Social Security’s primary source of information about these issues is your medical records. If the impairments you’re experiencing aren’t documented in the medical record, Social Security isn’t likely to accept them.

It’s one thing for you to tell Social Security that you have these problems and another for them to see it documented in the notes of every medical appointment that you have.

The bottom line is that you can’t get disability benefits without having documentation of your issues. This Three-Step Process our Utah disability law firm has developed is just a system to make sure you have that documentation.

If you have a question about your particular Social Security Disability claim, contact our disability attorneys today.