Disability Decision: The Wait for Social Security

There is no way to know exactly how long it will take to receive a decision on your disability claim, but it is a pretty safe bet that a final decision in your case will take many months, if not a year (or more).

Most people who file for disability expect to receive a decision in their case in a matter of a few months, but for many applicants the wait will be much longer. True, when you file for disability a social security claims rep will provide you with a date by which you should receive a decision in your case. However, this date is only an estimate, and the social security administration (SSA) is under no legal obligation to meet that date or any other date for that matter.

This may seem unfair, even cruel to those who are coping with physical or mental medical conditions, and who are almost certainly struggling financially as well. Why is there no deadline for decisions in social security disability (SSD) or supplemental security income (SSI) cases? Well, part of the reason is that there are so many variables that can affect the time it takes to process a claim, variables over which the SSA has no control.

Actually, disability decisions are not even made by the SSA itself, but instead are handled by disability examiners within the state disability determination services (DDS) agency. Due to a huge increase in the number of social security cases filed with DDS each year, backlogs exist in just about every state, and most examiners have more cases piled on their desks than they can possibly review in a timely manner.

Also, it is not uncommon for disability examiners to have difficulty obtaining medical records and test results from physicians, or to send claimants for consultative exams (brief exams with doctors who work for DDS) in order to get the information they need to close a case.

If you are filing a claim for SSD or SSI, do not delay your case by providing an incomplete medical history! Remember to include up-to-date contact information for your treating physicians and any medical facilities at which you've received treatment. The more current your medical information, the better if you have not seen a doctor within the last 60 days, you will definitely be required to attend a CE to prove that you are currently disabled. For obvious reasons, it's almost always better to have your most recent medical exam given by a physician who actually knows something about your symptoms and limitations, rather than a doctor who is employed to help disability examiners close cases.

So, what is the average wait for a disability decision from social security? The average time it takes to receive a decision from a disability examiner on an initial claim is four months. But, if you are turned down (about 70 percent of all disability claims are denied) and decide to file a request for reconsideration appeal with DDS, you can expect to wait a few more months to receive a decision.

Of course, over 80% of all reconsideration appeals are denied as well, at which point most applicants (those who don't give up), will file a second appeal.

Second appeals take place before at special hearings before administrative law judges (ALJs), and the good news is that more than half of all second appeals are successful. Unfortunately, in order to see an ALJ, you have to wait your turn, and it can be a long wait up to two years, depending on the backlogs in your state.