The Three Step Process

The Three Step Process is a method you can use to improve your chances of being successful in your claim for Social Security disability benefits.

When applying for disability, it’s important to understand that Social Security is more concerned about what your limitations are than what your diagnoses are. Basically, regardless of how severe your diagnosis may be, if they can’t see how that diagnosis affects your ability to do work, they won’t find you disabled.

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

For the most part though, it is important to understand that your limitations are what determine whether Social Security will find you disabled. The Three Step Process helps medical providers consistently document these limitations thereby increasing your chances of being successful.

Step 1: Share specific examples of your limitations with your doctors.

While determining if you are disabled, Social Security will be requesting medical records from your doctors. This is how they find medical evidence for your disability. However, your doctor can’t share with Social Security what they don’t know. So, you need to let your doctors know about your limitations. So the first step in the process is to share specific examples of your limitations in your ability to do your 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.”

“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.”

“This last week I have been really struggling to find the motivation to do anything. I’ve been waking up at 11:00 am but haven’t been able to get out of bed until 2:00 pm. 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 5:00 pm. 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.”

“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. So, I had to just go home without doing my shopping that day.”

Notice with each of these examples, a very specific day or time frame was given. It’s important to help establish time frames for your issues and limitations. Additionally, rather than focusing on your diagnosis, the focus is on how you are impaired in ways that could potentially 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.

Step 2: Ask doctors to write down the examples that you provided to them.

Doctors are trained to summarize what you say and to 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 not be 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 are 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 are telling the doctor, Social Security won’t know about the examples that you shared either. Furthermore, they 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 your life is affected by these, Social Security will often assume that 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. So, make sure to ask your doctors to note down what you have said to be put into your record.

Step 3: Verify that your doctors are writing down these examples.

There’s a possibility that you may ask your doctor to write down your examples and for some reason they don’t note them down. 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 written these down in your records, we recommend that at every doctor’s visit you request your office notes from your previous visit and review them while you are waiting to see the doctor. If there are any errors or there is any missing information, make a note of it on the paper. Then when you see your doctor point out the issues and ask them to make corrections right then. If your medical office has a 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 the office has an online portal, it will be to your benefit to get signed up for it.

If the office visit notes don’t include the examples that you provided for the doctor, ask them to note them down again. It’s important that Social Security sees this information.

Do You Have Any Advice to Make This Easier?

So you are not just trying to remember examples when you show up at your appointment, you may want to start keeping a journal of any issues or symptoms that you notice as a part of your condition. This can really help with establishing specific time frames in your examples. Rather than saying “last month some time” you can point to a specific date that you had a specific issue.

As you keep a journal, you can establish a pattern of specific limitations and issues and how that might interfere with an average work day or week. Given this, make sure to also note down recovery time of any issue that you have. If you take a fall, note down low long you must rest for before you can get up and walking or moving again. Requiring significant rest periods or breaks would definitely impact your ability to work.

When considering what kind of examples to provide, think of the easiest job you can think of and then 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 be able to remember and provide accurate information. If you have bad days with your symptoms that would prevent you from working every day as scheduled, providing examples of those days to your medical providers is essential to establishing your disability.

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 they aren’t documented in the medical record, Social Security isn’t likely to accept them. Additionally, 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 without having documentation of your issues. This “Three Step Process” our firm came up with is just a system to help make sure you have that documentation.