social security disability

Does social security contact your former work employers when you file for disability?


 
This is not typically what decision-makers on social security disability claims do. The decision-makers, for those who are unaware, are disability examiners and disability judges (administrative law judges). Disability examiners render decisions on SSD and SSI claims at the disability application and reconsideration appeal levels. Administrative law judges, of course, render decisions at the disability hearing level.

Disability examiners will ordinarily rely on work activity questionaires supplied by a claimant during the application and evaluation process to do the following:

1. Classify a claimant's past work.

2. Determine the nature of the claimant's past work in terms of the physical and mental demands of the claimant's relevant jobs.

3. Compare the demands of the claimant's past work so that this may be compared to the present capabilities of the claimant, known as the claimant's residual functional capacity, or RFC.

It should be clear, then, that properly classifying the claimant's past jobs is extremely important since it can literally influence the outcome of a disability case. Therefore, despite the fact that disability examiners generally rely on the information provided by a claimant in a work history report or work activity questionaire, there are occasions in which an examiner will contact a claimant's former employer. As a disability examiner, I myself did this to learn more about what a claimant's work duties were for a particular job and to learn also what difficulties the claimant had in performing these duties.














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