|
5. Advice: Try your best to stay compliant with your prescribed medications. In the end, whether you took your prescribed medicine or not may affect how your impairments are viewed. In fact, judges will often deny claims in which claimants did not take what was prescribed. The fact that the claimant had no means by which to obtain their needed meds is generally irrelevant to an ALJ at a disability hearing.
6. Stay friendly with the people working on your case, even if your case has experienced problems along the way (long waits, misplaced paperwork, etc). This includes the people at Social Security and Disability Determination Services, as well anyone who might represent you. The disability process can be anxiety-provoking at times, but maintaining good relations with the individuals working on your case is good advice to practice. The truth is: these individuals usually have very many cases to work on and literally hundreds of phone calls each week to deal with (this is absolutely true). How you last communicated with one of these individuals can make the difference as to whether or not your case gets more attention, or less. 7. Have your treating physician complete an RFC form on your behalf. RFC stands for residual functional capacity. RFC forms are used by DDS examiners (each examiner must have their unit physician or psychologist complete the appropriate physical or mental RFC form before a claimant's case can be closed) and carry great weight, particularly at hearings held by Administrative Law Judges. To learn more about RFC forms, click the "Disability Definitions" tab on the menu below and from that page read the definition titled "residual functional capacity form, or rfc". 8. Never call the Social Security Administration's 1-800 information number to get updates on a disability claim. The information supplied by the call center reps at the 1-800 number is routinely and consistently incorrect. Speaking from experience, in the last couple of years, I have spoken with no less than forty or fifty disability claimants who had questions and were given blatantly wrong information regarding the disposition of their claims, causing them great anxiety as a result. To get updates on a disability case, call either the social security office where you filed, or the disability examiner at Disability Determination Services. And, if a hearing has been requested, call (or, better yet, have your representative call) the Office of Hearings & Appeals since, at that point, the social security office will know very little about the pending status of a disability claim. A disability attorney can help you win SSD. To contact an attorney for help, click here Questions & Answers about Disability Lawyers and Non Attorney Reps |
|
SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY ATTORNEY, REPRESENTATIVE LAWYER LIST ANSWERS TO YOUR SSD & SSI QUESTIONS PAGE 3 ANSWERS TO YOUR SSD & SSI QUESTIONS PAGE 4 |
| Social Security Disability The chances of winning on a disability case |