What Happens if Your Medical Condition Changes During an SSDI Claim?
Your health may not stay the same while you wait for an SSDI decision. Symptoms can suddenly worsen, treatment can start working, or a new diagnosis can change your understanding of what is happening. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is evaluating your claim based on the evidence available to it.
Changes in your condition can affect your SSDI claim because SSA considers the severity and expected duration of your impairments and how they limit your ability to work. Relevant changes and updated medical evidence should therefore be reflected in your disability record while your claim is pending.
At Leavitt Meunier Law LLC, we help clients keep their SSDI claims aligned with changes in their medical conditions and the evidence supporting their limitations. From our Metairie, Louisiana office, we serve clients throughout New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Hammond, Alexandria, Shreveport, Monroe, Lake Charles, Northshore, Mandeville, Covington, and Madisonville.
Your Medical Evidence May Need to Be Updated
A change in your health can affect the medical and functional evidence SSA considers when deciding whether you meet its definition of disability. SSA generally looks at whether a medically determinable impairment prevents you from performing substantial gainful activity and has lasted or is expected to last for at least 12 continuous months or result in death.
A change can therefore matter in different ways. Worsening symptoms may create additional limitations. A new diagnosis may identify another medically determinable impairment. Surgery, hospitalization, new treatment, or complications may produce additional evidence. Significant improvement may affect the severity or expected duration of your limitations.
SSA may not already have your most recent treatment records, even if you received additional care. Keeping the agency handling your claim informed of relevant developments and providing accurate information about new medical sources can help ensure the disability determination reflects current evidence.
We can review changes in your health and determine what updated information may be relevant to your pending claim.
A Worsening Condition Can Affect Your Claim
If your condition worsens while your SSDI claim is pending, make sure the change and its effects are medically documented. New symptoms or increased limitations may be relevant to SSA's evaluation, particularly if they affect your ability to perform work-related activities.
Consider taking the following steps:
Continue appropriate medical care: Keep appointments and follow up on significant new or worsening symptoms.
Identify new medical records: Keep track of new tests, diagnoses, medications, treatments, emergency visits, surgeries, or hospitalizations.
Explain new limitations: Tell your healthcare providers accurately how your symptoms affect activities such as sitting, standing, walking, concentrating, remembering, or using your hands.
Keep us informed: Let us know about significant changes so we can determine whether additional evidence should be submitted.
Update relevant information: Make sure SSA has accurate information about medical providers and other evidence relevant to the change.
The change itself is only part of the picture. Medical and other evidence showing how the worsening condition affects your ability to function can be particularly important when you are seeking SSDI benefits.
A New Diagnosis Can Add Relevant Evidence
A new diagnosis can affect your SSDI claim, but the diagnosis by itself does not establish that you are disabled under SSA's rules. Its significance depends on the medical evidence and how the condition, alone or together with your other impairments, affects your ability to function and work.
Updated diagnostic testing, treatment records, medical opinions, hospital records, and medication information can provide evidence about the newly diagnosed condition and its effects. The relevant evidence may show the symptoms you experience, the treatment you require, your response to that treatment, and any additional restrictions or functional limitations.
SSA considers the combined effect of your medically determinable impairments rather than necessarily evaluating each condition in isolation. A newly diagnosed condition may therefore matter even when another impairment was the primary basis of your original application.
We can help identify updated evidence that may need to be added to your disability record.
Improvement Can Also Affect Your Claim
Improvement does not automatically mean that your SSDI claim will be denied. What matters is whether the evidence still establishes that you meet SSA's definition of disability, including the applicable duration and work-related requirements.
For example, treatment may reduce one symptom while significant limitations remain. Pain might improve while you still cannot sit or stand long enough to sustain work activities. Medication may control certain symptoms but cause side effects that affect concentration or functioning.
Returning to some work also does not necessarily resolve the disability question by itself. SSA evaluates work activity and earnings when determining whether work constitutes substantial gainful activity.
Significant improvement should be accurately reflected in your claim just as worsening symptoms should be. We can review the updated evidence and explain how changes in your health or work activity may affect the pending application.
Get SSDI Guidance When Your Health Changes
An SSDI claim can remain pending while your medical circumstances continue to evolve. Making sure the record reflects significant new diagnoses, worsening symptoms, meaningful improvement, treatment changes, and resulting functional limitations can help SSA evaluate your claim based on current information.
At Leavitt Meunier Law LLC, we help clients address medical developments that arise during the disability process and identify evidence relevant to their claims. If your health has changed while your SSDI application is pending, contact our Social Security disability attorneys in Metairie, Louisiana, to discuss what those changes may mean for your claim.