Medical Records and Social Security Disability

All right, everybody, this is Anthony Reid's attorney at law, and I'm going to give you my legal beat tip of the day today. We're going to talk about medical records and Social Security. Now, most of you have been told this, unless and if you haven't, let me throw out a little point here. You bear the responsibility of proving your disabled. It's not Social Security's responsibility you do, which means you must show that your condition prevents you from doing work. If you're an adult, and if you're a child, you must show that your child is not functioning a the same level as a child in this particular age group. But in any event, you bear the responsibility of proving that you're disabled. How do you do that? Medical

records, go to treatment, getting medical treatment, and of course the medical records. Now, let me walk you through the Social Security Disability progras process and give you an understanding of how that plays out. Okay, so you go into Social Security office or you go online, you buy your application.

Great, you get your application started. That gets the ball rolling. Most people don't realize is that we operate in what I like to call a two tier system. I mean, social Security makes the technical decision and then what they do is, once they've determined from a technical standpoint, you qualify for one of their programs, They then send your file off for a medical determination.

Now, the federal government has contracted with state agencies, which is called the Disability Determination Services, in order to do the medical development of your case. That means there's a state agency that's responsible for sending out forms to you and your loved ones, for scheduling appointments where doctors for Social Security doctors, and getting compasy of your medical records. Now, listen to these points as I address them clearly along the way. When you first start your application, you need to tell Social Security all the doctors that you're going to see.

That's fairly easy. The biggest thing comes up as when people say, okay, a couple months later, you're going to a new doctor, who do I tell? Well, here's what you need to do to make sure the Social Security has the appropriate records. If you've just started your case and you have not received a letter from the Disability Determination Services, and it'll say it on there, it's either the Office of Disability Determination or Disability Determination Services.

If you have not received that letter, you need to contact Social Security whenever you have a new update. Now to cover yourself. At some point in time, you're gonna get letter or letters from the Disability Determination Services, whether it be because they want you to give them more information, whether it be because they need you to give them the names of some people to talk to, whether it be for perployments, whatever. When you get that letter from them, that's the agency connected with Social Security that's responsible for updating your file.

So what is that telling you, Well, if you have new updates for medical records, you need to call the Disability Determination Services, not Social Security. Now why do I tell you that? Well, because what happens is one Social Security does their technical portion, they send your case over to them for the medical workup. So you're actually adding a step if you go to Social Security, ask them to put that information in your file and then have them transfer it to them, and just in case it doesn't get there, you don't want to be mad because what happens is that a lot of times people say, I call Social Security and the medical records from the doctor I went to wasn't in the decision that denied me. Well, sometimes the

one hand doesn't talk to the other. It happens on occasion, happens in private sector as well as public sector. But to cover your basis, what you want to do is you want to contact the Disability Determination Services. Now you will know this because they'll send you a letter. So don't throw those letters away. Keep it because there's phone numbers on there. Now here's a couple of things that you also need to be aware. Social Security or the Disability Determination Services they work on a budget, so they're not going to be dropping big dollars for all of your records. So if you're talking about because they let me pause for a second, say for instance, you went to a hospital, Social Scurity said, we need the records from the hospital.

The hospitals like, well, we're going to charge you five hundred dollars to give you all for us to get all those records. Social Scurity is not going to pay five hundred dollars for all those records. And you're like, well, that sucks because if I have the responsibility of proving I'm disabled, what do I do if they're not going to give them get those records.

Keep in mind, most companies, whether it be doctors, clinics, and so forth, they deal with the federal agencies all the time, so they usually give them a break in terms of how much they're going to charge. Some facilities don't seriously, some don't. And Social Security typically they have a dollar a mouth that gonna put in terms of getting cops to medical records.

Now, if you've got a representative, it works out great because sometimes your representative will go and get those records for you. Keep in mind, some representatives were going to charge you for those records, so they'll either one make you pay them a front, or if they go get those records, you're gonna have to reimburse them. But let's just go rule of thumb. Rule of thumb is this if you're applying for Social Security disability benefits and if you're at the early phases, because some states you have to get denied twice by the local office, some states only once. But when your case is at the local office level, they will get your medical records for you as long as the disability determination services are still working with the local office. At the

local office level, that means your initial application, or if you've been denied once and there's a second appeal, it's what we call the reconsideration level, and you'll know if you're at the reconsideration or the initial level, because if you when you file your application, that's an If you get a denial letter and it says you can file a request for reconsideration, that's the recon level.

They will still update your file. If you get that first denial and you see on there that they didn't have some of your old records or records that you told them about, make sure you update them. People. I cannot emphasize this enough. Social Security will get your medical records for you, but they can't get them if you don't tell them. And remember, at the initial local office level or the recon local office level, there is a state agency that gets the medical records. So when you start getting letters from those agencies telling you that they need stuff, keep those numbers so that if Social Security, I mean excuse me, if you get some updated medical records, you contact the disability determination services, tell them, ask the person's name,

ask them where you can faxitude, put it to their attention, so that this way you know, okay, that is the local office level. So you get denied maybe once and you go to a hearing or twice, you go to hearing. I need to make this point abundantly clear to you, when you get to the point where you have to go before a judge, Social Security will not get any more records for you from that point forward.

From that point forward, you have to get those records. That's your responsibility. Nobody else is but yours. So when you come before the judge and you go by yourself, or you go with a representative who basically requires you to pay them upfront, and you choose not to pay because you're like, no, I'm not gonna pay for those records. I don't have the money. The adverage case, I think right now, I think the fastest hearing office in the country has a hearing in about two hundred and seventy days.

I think so. Well, basically, what I'm telling you here is the slowest office right now to have a hearing date is still a couple of months, but two months shot of a year. So if you've been going to the doctor the whole time, guess what if the last record they have is from the local office which was done back a year or a year ago, that's all they're going to have. So don't walk into that hearing with attitude talking about look here I've been going to the doctor, where are your records? Well, social Security? No, no, no, no.

At the hearing level, they stop. So that means you need to get those records, and you need to be prepared to get those records. And so I always stress that to people so that they don't get there their feelings hurt when they walk into the hearing and they're like, well, I don't understand. That's why I tell people at the early phases, you want to let Social Security know as much as possible. Be aggressive about letting them know.

And if you have a representative who is informing Social Security, you need to let your representative know as well. At the hearing level, if you go before a judge, there is no requirement for them to get your medical records. If you get denied by a judge and he goes to the appeals council, here's what medical records get a little tricky because sometimes what people want to do is they want to barade the appeals council with a lot of medical records. And I always tell people typically at the appeals council level, they're not taking a fresh look at the medical records. They're looking at it as what did the judge have before he or she and did they make an error of law in making their decision. Now here's how you work with those records

after the fact. Let's say, for instance, that you've gone to a primary doctor and you got all those records to the judge and the judge denied you. But then the primary doctor sends you to a neurologist who says, you know what, you're disabled because the neurologists and their expertise based on your condition determine your disabled Well, that's new because the neurologist wasn't available at the time you had the hearing. It's material, it goes to your condition, and the good reason that you didn't have it but for the hearing is because you had only just been recently sent there. So that's something the Appeals Council is going to want to have because they're going to say, looking at this evidence, maybe the judge, if he had he or she had this,

may have made a different determination with regards to your condition. That's a whole another story. But let me just kind of break medical records down to their purest essence. At the local office level, you got to make sure they can have all the medical information. They'll get your medical records for you.

Once you've been denied once or twice, depending on what state you're in, you bear the responsibility of getting your medical records to Social Security from that point forward. Keep that in mind. When I mean that point forward, I mean throughout the rest of the process, whether you go before judge, whether you have to appeal before the Appeals Council, or even if you have to go into federal court. The moment you have to ask for hearing, the responsibility of Social Security to get your medical records stops. Keep that in mind because I don't want anybody out there coogoo for cocopuffs because they think that the responsibility for Social Security to get their medical records is continuous. It is not.

Keep in mind, you bear the responsibility of proving your disabled and the only way you can do it is with medical records. Be aware, aware Social Security has responsibilities to get your medical records and where yours actually begins as well. Hopefully that helped you. Again, you can always find more information at Legalbeatt Anthony Reeves dot com, or you can check me out at Reevesfirm dot com. Hope this helped helped you out have a wonderful day.

Medical Records and Social Security Disability

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