Social Security and Medical Record Information

Social Security Disability and SSI disability decisions have two fundamental aspects to them. For adult claims, they are both medical and vocational in nature. That is to say, they are based on the information obtained from a person's history of medical treatment, as well as their history of work activity (in the case of minor child applications for SSI disability, replace work activity with age-appropriate activities; typically, the non-medical-development focus for children will be on obtaining academic, achievement, and cognitive testing records).

However, most individuals when they file for disability seem to be more focused on the impact made by their medical records. This is probably because it doesn't take a lot of intuition to figure out that this type of information will provide a basis for their disability determination, whereas the nature of vocational considerations (what is past relevant work, what is other work, how do factors like age and education come into play, how is other work viewed differently by judges versus disability examiners, etc?) would probably require some explanation for most, if not all, claimants.

Older and newer medical records will serve a distinct purpose; the former for establishing the most favorable onset date (which can have a direct impact on A) how much you receive in back pay and B) when your medicare coverage kicks in, assuming that you claim for disability is for title II social security disability benefits versus SSI only) and the latter for establishing the fact that a person is disabled "in the here and now"--if you are not currently disabled, according to your medical records, you cannot be awarded disability benefits by the social security administration




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