Why Must Your Disability Insurance Lawyer Understand Your Disabling Condition?
When it comes to securing your disability insurance benefits, it’s vitally important that your disability insurance lawyer thoroughly understands the symptoms and impact of your disabling condition. Doctors can help you create strong medical records, but they’re not accustomed to dealing with the rigorous documentation disability insurance companies require. Learn more about why it’s so important that your disability insurance lawyer understands your disabling condition.
The disability companies are notorious for denying disability claims based upon a lack of objective evidence that a claimant would never be able to prove.
Ideally, a disability claimant will have some objective medical evidence (like definitive testing results or an MRI, CT scan, or X-ray that clearly shows the extent of the disability) to provide the disability insurance company. But so many disabling conditions, from Parkinson’s to cognitive issues to back injuries, don’t show up on most diagnostic tests – despite leaving many of their sufferers unable to work.
These “invisible illnesses” demonstrate the importance of having an attorney who understands these medical conditions. An experienced disability insurance attorney will know what additional testing (like cognitive testing or a vocational review) will be necessary to support your claim.
There is no medical device that measures pain and therefore the disability companies acceptance of your subjective complaints will be based upon your credibility.
Chronic pain is one of the most common symptoms prompting a long term disability claim. But because there’s no reliable way to measure how much pain someone is in at any given time, claimants need to rely on subjective evidence to support their claim. This can be challenging when you’re dealing with a disability insurance company that likes to see objective medical evidence of disability.
This is again why it is so helpful to have an attorney who understands your medical condition and can help you pursue targeted testing. It’s also crucial to maintain your credibility by being honest about your symptoms and limitations. Understating or overstating the impact of your condition can make you vulnerable to “gotcha” moments, whether this involves video surveillance of you walking your dog or taking a long drive, social media posts of you out to dinner, or interviews with your neighbors about your daily activities. Though these investigative methods can seem intrusive, they’re par for the course for disability insurance companies that are looking for any reason to deny a claim.
Strong continued medical documentation with all of your doctors is essential in order to keep your disability benefits from being denied.
Once your disability claim has been approved and you’ve started receiving benefits, you may assume the hard part is over. However, to continue receiving benefits, you’ll need to continue generating medical documentation that proves you’re entitled to them. Disability insurance benefits aren’t a one-shot deal; your insurance company may check in with you and your doctors monthly, bimonthly, or semi-annually to see whether your condition still prevents you from working.
If it’s been a few months since you’ve been to the doctor, the disability insurance company may assume this means you’re “cured” – even if the real reason you haven’t been to the doctor is because there are no more treatments available. Be sure to keep up regular medical appointments so that your medical file doesn’t have any gaps.
A doctor does not document your medical records for the benefit of a disability company, therefore you need to make sure the doctor puts all of your complaints in your medical records.
Doctors aren’t accustomed to putting their notes and observations in a form that’s easy for the insurance company to digest. But for your medical records to support a long term disability claim, they need to contain all the information the disability insurance company is seeking. At Dell Disability Lawyers, we’ll work with you and your doctors to ensure that they’re logging the information they need to – like specific observations about your condition and how it affects your ability to perform key job duties – so that the disability insurance company has little wiggle room to deny your claim.
No matter where you are in the long term disability claim process, you can benefit from a team of attorneys with extensive experience in disability insurance law. Give Dell Disability Lawyers a call today to schedule your FREE consultation.
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