Welcome! This site is written for Social Security disability claimants, for their legal representatives, and for the network of people involved in the Social Security disability claim process. I hope you find it helpful.
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When Social Security receives your initial disability claim, it sends the claim to Disability Determination Services (DDS) for review. DDS examines your medical records and the other evidence in your claim file, and establishes your residual functional capacity (RFC). 

The problem with this approach is that DDS does not obtain your doctor's opinion about your functional limitations. Rather, DDS reviews your medical records and makes its own determination. 

Unfortunately, a doctor's treatment notes are created to manage a patient's medical care, and are not intended to establish the functional limitations that Social Security uses to evaluate that patient's ability to work. It is often difficult to discern a claimant's limitations from the medical records alone. Therefore, the method used by DDS to evaluate disability frequently results in a denial of the initial claim.

To remedy this situation, obtain your doctor's opinion regarding your physical and/or mental limitations, and how those limitations affect your ability to work. Social Security is not concerned with whether or not your doctor believes you are disabled; that is an issue reserved to the Commissioner. What is important is your doctor's opinion regarding your work-related functional limitations. And that doctor's opinion is missing from almost every Social Security claim file when it first arrives in my law office.

A medical source statement from your doctor setting forth your limitations due to your impairments is often the most powerful evidence in support of your disability claim. Obtaining these opinions is one of my most important tasks as a Social Security disability lawyer.

Every two weeks, we round up articles of note from the Social Security disability blogs. 

There is a long list of good articles this week, but I want to highlight Jonathan Ginsberg's method in this post. He linked to an article from another lawyer's blog, and then commented on it. All of us should do this more often. It helps to further the conversation about our niche area of law. It also strengthens our informal network of professional blogs at the expense of the sort of blogs that Tim Moore decries in his post, below: 

Please appeal your denied disability claim within 60 days. Do not let that deadline pass! I spoke recently with a prospective client who received a Reconsideration denial letter in January. If you received a letter denying Social Security disability benefits in January, it is time to appeal!

I have written several times about the 60 day appeal deadline and why you should appeal your denial. However, about 70% of the readers of this site are new visitors (I know this from my Google analytics stats). It is desirable to repeat some basic tenets from time to time, so that they are seen by new visitors to the site. 

For the 30% of you who are repeat visitors, thank you. I hope you continue to find value here. 

For the 70% of you who are visiting for the first time, welcome. While you are here, I recommend that you look at the pages listed under "Important Topics" on the sidebar. But whatever you do, if you have received a denial letter for Social Security disability or SSI benefits, appeal that denial right away.

A recent article regarding Lyme disease in the local York County paper notes that cases of Lyme disease are on the rise in Maine.

The number of Lyme disease cases in Maine tells a story of its own: the reported cases in York County jumped 62 percent between 2007 and 2008, with the increase statewide climbing an astounding 645 percent between 2000 and 2007. …

But the numbers only tell part of the Lyme disease story. It’s the people affected by the disease who bring those numbers to life, one story at a time.

Lyme disease can cause a wide variety of symptoms, including arthritis-like pain, muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, and problems with memory loss and concentration.

Fewer than 50 percent of the patients with Lyme disease recall a tick bite or a rash. Further, Lyme disease can be difficult to diagnose, because symptoms can vary and false negative tests are common.

I have written previously about Lyme disease and Social Security disability. If you have Lyme disease or suspect that you do, it is important to find a Lyme-literate primary care physician, and to consult an infectious disease specialist who handles Lyme cases.

When you are awarded Social Security disability benefits, you do not receive benefits beginning on your disability onset date.  Rather, there is a 5 month waiting period before benefits begin. As a practical matter, it is often a 6 month waiting period, because the waiting period is 5 full calendar months of disability. So if your first month of disability was a partial month, that month doesn’t count towards the 5 month waiting period.

The waiting period is often a surprise to claimants. It is particularly noticeable for those claimants who apply for disability benefits shortly after stopping work, and have their initial claim for benefits granted. For those claimants, there are often no retroactive benefits at all due to the operation of the 5 month waiting period.

A recent article, entitled A Life of "Maybe" With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome notes that fibromyalgia patients live in a world of "maybes." Maybe you will feel all right on a given day, but maybe not. The "maybes" make it hard to maintain a job, a social life, relationships, you name it.

Living in a world of "maybes" is a good description of daily life with fibromyalgia.

In terms of a claim for Social Security disability benefits, Social Security Ruling 96-8p has these claimants covered. According to the Ruling, a person must be able to work on a regular and continuing basis, which means 8 hours a day, for 5 days a week, or an equivalent work schedule. 

If a claimant is unable to work on a regular and continuing basis, a finding of disability is appropriate. In my experience, many claims are granted for those with fibromyalgia on this basis, since there are simply too many "bad days" each month to sustain employment.

Here is a selection of recent articles from the Social Security disability blogs:

Every now and then at a Social Security disability hearing, the issue of failure to follow prescribed medical treatment is raised by the administrative law judge. 

You don’t want this issue at your hearing. If a claimant has failed to follow prescribed medical treatment, and the prescribed treatment would restore the claimant’s ability to work at the SGA level, then the disability claim will be denied. See 20 C.F.R. 404.1530.

An individual who would otherwise be found to be under a disability, but who fails without justifiable cause to follow treatment prescribed by a treating source which the Social Security Administration (SSA) determines can be expected to restore the individual’s ability to work, cannot be virtue of such “failure” be found to be under a disability.

The issue of failure to follow prescribed medical treatment is addressed by Social Security Ruling 82-59. The Ruling is a must-read. It is important to know the details of the compliance analysis, because it can salvage a disability claim. Actual failure to follow prescribed treatment is narrowly defined; each of several requirements must be met before a denial on that basis is appropriate.

The requirements are: (1) the treatment must have been prescribed by a treating source; (2) the treatment at issue should be expected to restore the claimant’s ability to work; (3) the treatment must have been refused; (4) the refusal must have been without justifiable excuse.

A doctor’s recommendation (to stop smoking, or to lose weight, or to get more exercise) is not prescribed treatment. For more on evaluating failure to follow prescribed treatment in the context of obesity, see Social Security Ruling 02-1p at #14.

The Social Security Administration just published current statistics regarding the workload of the hearing offices around the country, including the Portland, Maine hearing office. 

The Workload Data Report shows the Portland ODAR received 976 appealed claims in Fiscal Year 2010, disposed of 771 claims, and has 2,989 pending claims as of December 2009. That is a lot of pending claims. The current average processsing time is 320 days.

The NETSTAT Report shows "the average time (in months) from the hearing request date until a hearing is held for claims pending in the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review's hearing offices. Allows users to estimate the amount of time they may have to wait for a hearing to be held." A claimant should expect to wait 11 months for a hearing in Portland, Maine.

The SSA has just released, and posted on its website, a goldmine of current statistics regarding the Social Security hearing offices (ODARs) and judges.

Check out the ALJ Disposition Data. These Fiscal Year 2010 statistics, which run through December 2009, are the most current available. Notably, the data includes the disposition statistics for new ALJs who have been under the radar until now. The list is alphabetical by judge. Just scroll down to find the ALJ you seek.