When you are found to be disabled, you should expect to face continuing disability reviews in the future. After any disability determination, a date known as a diary will be scheduled for a review. Generally, they are supposed to be three or seven years after the most recent disability finding. Some disabling impairments, such as many mental illnesses, are considered more likely to improve so a three-year review may be set. Others – like low intellectual functioning – generally remain throughout one’s life, but the law requires reviews so they probably would be set for review seven years after the most recent disability determination. The likelihood of improvement is the key so a condition initially found disabling but viewed as one that probably won’t last beyond than the one-year requirement in the Social Security Administration’s disability definition may be revisited within a year of the current decision.
At times, insufficient funding has made review less likely than the law dictates. Recently, Congress increased funding for continuing disability reviews so people who have escaped review in the past should be aware that they might be not so lucky in the near future.
A continuing disability review (CDR) will focus on your medical condition instead of your financial situation. There are various factors considered in this decision regarding whether or not your condition continues to prevent you from working enough to remain disabled under the agency’s rules and regulations. The basic issue is if there has been any medical improvement in your impairment(s) that led to you being found disabled. If there has been improvement, the next issue is if the medical improvement has affected your ability to work. However, even when there has been no medical improvement, there is another factor: do any exceptions to medical improvement (which will be discussed briefly later) apply? If there is no medical improvement applicable exception, you remain disabled.
What happens if the continuing disability review shows that you have medically improved – and the improvement is related to your ability to work – or an exception to medical improvement applies? You may lose your disability benefits. In general, this only occurs if the SSA finds that you can do substantial gainful activity (which is basically working 8 hours a day for 5 days each week). Also, even when your condition has improved, you still may be disabled because the SSA then has to decide if your condition meets its current disability rules. In the end, most people actually keep receiving benefits after a CDR.
The definition of “medical improvement” in a continuing disability review is any decrease in the medical severity of your impairment(s) that were present during the most recent determination that found you disabled, often referred to as the “most recent comparison point.” If you have not been reviewed after your initial disability determination, that initial decision is the comparison point regarding any improvement. However, if you had a CDR after the first decision, your condition at the prior continuing disability review is now the comparison point. Medical improvement could be found based on improvements in your symptoms (which you report), signs (as observed by medical professionals), and/or laboratory findings associated with your impairment(s).
Medical improvement alone doesn’t mean that your disability has ended. Improvement must be related to your ability to work. If the impairments that led to the finding of disability at the most recent comparison point now are less severe, your improved condition won’t not affect your disability status if your functional capacity to perform basic work activities hasn’t increased.
Even if your functional abilities have increased, you must be able to perform substantial gainful activity defined by the SSA in the year of the continuing disability review to end your disability benefits. Unless your capacity to work improves to this extent or one of the exceptions (which will be mentioned later) applies to you, your benefits will continue. What is “functional capacity to do basic work activities?”
Disability looks at the inability to do any substantial gainful activity due to any medically determinable physical or mental impairment. “Basic work activities” are abilities and aptitudes required by most jobs. They include exertional abilities, such as walking, standing, pushing, pulling, reaching, and carrying. Nonexertional abilities and aptitudes include seeing, hearing, speaking, remembering, using judgment, handling changes, and dealing with supervisors and coworkers. A person with no impairments can do all of these, basically, and has an unlimited functional capacity for basic work activities.
Disabling impairments result in some limitation to the functional 犀利士5mg
capacity for at least one of these basic work activities. Residual functional capacity (RFC) is what you can do despite limitations caused by an impairment. If you can’t perform substantial gainful activity based on your RFC, you are disabled. Your RFC is used to determine whether you can do your past work or, considering your age, education, and work experience, other work at the level of substantial gainful activity.
In a continuing disability review, the Administration must determine if any medical improvement is related to your ability to work when there is a decrease in medical severity shown by symptoms, signs, and laboratory findings. The SSA assesses your residual functional capacity based on the current severity of the impairment(s) present at your last favorable medical decision.
The new residual functional capacity is compared to your residual functional capacity during your prior disability decision. An increase in your residual functional capacity is based on actual changes in the signs, symptoms, or laboratory findings – otherwise, any medical improvement isn’t considered related to your ability to do work.
There are additional factors and considerations that can be part of the continuing disability review. Generally, the most important of these are any exceptions to medical improvement. There are two groups of exceptions to medical improvement reviewed at a continuing disability review. The first focuses on current impairments and the ability to do substantial gainful activity. The Administration looks at evidence that you no longer are disabled – or, perhaps, never should have been considered disabled. There must be substantial evidence of any of these.
One exception arises if you benefited from advances in medical or vocational therapy or technology related to your ability to work. There also may be new or improved diagnostic or evaluative techniques showing your impairment is not as disabling as it was found to be during your most recent favorable decision. A third exception involves substantial evidence showing a prior disability decision was in error, although this only can be found when conditions for reopening a prior decision are met.
The second category of exceptions to medical improvement not involving medical improvement or substantial gainful activity also can lead to an end of your benefits at a continuing disability review. One involves a prior determination or decision was fraudulently obtained. The Administration looks at physical, mental, educational, or language limitations that you had at the prior determination. Another exception concerns not cooperating with the SSA. If asked for medical or other evidence or told to go to a medical examination, you will be found no longer disabled if you ignore such “requests,” provided you lack good cause for the failure. The third exception in this group seems obvious: if the SSA cannot find you and has questions regarding your disability, your payments will be suspended. Finally, your failure to follow prescribed treatment which would be expected to restore your ability to engage in substantial gainful activity, unless you show good cause for this, will end your entitlement to benefits.
If you are notified your Social Security disability benefits are to be ceased after an unfavorable continuing disability review, your benefits will continue for two more months to allow you time to arrange other support. (You also may be able to contest the decision.) The only exception to the two-month rule is if your benefits are ending for failure to cooperate – in that case, they would cease immediately.