Last year I assisted one of my clients in his application for Social Security benefits. The client had extensive and well-documented impairments. He even spent weeks in the ICU after nearly dying from one of his underlying conditions. He was almost immediately awarded SSI benefits under a special program called Quick Disability Determination (QDD), that makes decisions on applications where it is almost certain the Claimant will be awarded benefits because of serious medical issues. My client was overjoyed, especially after I had prepared him for the typical six-month wait for a decision that was usually a denial, which would be followed by a two-year wait for a hearing.
After six months, the payments stopped. After several calls to the Social Security Administration, it was determined that this special program is not always so great. It turns out that the award of benefits in cases like this is only temporary until the Social Security Administration verifies the medical conditions through its traditional process of deciding cases and by sending the claimant to consultative examinations with independent medical sources. In my client’s case, the Social Security Administration never even sent him out for a consultative examination until the payments stopped.
In the seventh month, we received a letter from the Social Security Administration stating that they would need an additional 60 days to make a determination on my client’s claim. In the end, it took nine months of waiting for my client to finally get awarded disability benefits under the Quick Disability Determination program, compared to the typical six-month wait to get a decision under the traditional process.