When and How to Check the Status of Your Social Security Disability (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Claim Status for Benefits

Questions You Can Ask Your Disability Examiner When You Periodically Check the Status of Your Disability Claim 

Excerpt--This is Step 3 -- a sample chapter from the Book Entitled Getting Social Security Disability: Your 9 Step Guide

Periodically checking the status of your disability claim is vital to getting a faster decision on your claim. This section discusses when you should check the status, why you need to check the status and how to check the status. A version of this section is posted in full on my disability esp website because it is so essential to getting a faster decision, so it is reprinted here.

Why Check The Status of Your Disability Application?

 Checking the status of your disability claim at the right time can be crucial in helping you speed up processing of your application.

This is because when you call in to get a status check, it forces the disability examiner to take a look at your folder or electronic record, and s/he can then tell you what else is needed for processing, or at least where the claim is in the sequence of steps that are involved in its development.  

When Should You Check the Status of Your Disability Claim?

Having worked as a disability examiner, here are my suggestions for when you should check the status of your claim based on the various case development stages of adult initial claims. 

1.    You should call your disability examiner (DE) in the state Disability Determination Services (DDS) office or the Disability Adjudication Services (DAS) office 30 days after you have completed your application. If everything has gone as it should, by then the DE has written to all the doctors/hospitals listed on your application to request your “medical evidence of record” or MER (as it is called internally). The examiner has given these medical providers two to three weeks to get the records turned in. Because the worker makes these requests within days of receiving a new claim for processing, all of your MER should have been received in the first 30 days if your doctors/hospitals staff and their medical records departments have been cooperative in sending the records in to the DDS office.  

Unfortunately, most DDS offices have a list (either in writing or in fact) of medical facilities that are notorious for either not providing medical records in a timely matter (if at all) or providing records that have been known to be totally useless in giving the information necessary to decide a claim. 

In my experience, medical records from the Veterans Administration, while usually voluminous, generally have little substance unless there are x-rays or other objective test results located in the file.

So to recap, the reasons you are checking the status of your claim at day-30 is to ask the DE: 

A)              “What is the status of my claim?”  If the worker says something like “It is still pending.” or “No decision has been made,” then your next question will be:   

B)              “Have you gotten my medical records from all of my doctors/hospitals/providers?”  If they tell you that one or more doctors has not sent in records, then you should 

C)               Ask for the names of the doctors or hospitals that have not provided records to date. Then, 

D)            You should, if you are able to or have someone who can, offer to assist the DE in getting those missing medical records. How? 

 Next page: How You Can Assist in Getting Your Medical Records...

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