Medical evidence is crucial to a disability determination for a Social Security disability claim for both Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Each claimant who files a disability claim is responsible for providing medical evidence showing the claimant has at least one impairment that limits the ability to work and the severity of the impairment. The Social Security Administration will assist the claimant to get medical evidence from the claimant’s own medical sources who have evaluated, examined, or treated the claimant for the impairment. Claimants who provide SSA with timely, accurate, and complete information and evidence can help accelerate the processing of claims. Below are examples of the information Social Security needs to evaluate the existence of an impairment and the severity of that impairment.
Existence of an impairment
By law, SSA needs specific medical evidence to establish that a claimant has an impairment. Social Security regulations require “objective medical evidence” from an “acceptable medical source” to establish that a claimant has a medically determinable impairment. The regulations define these terms.
Severity
Once the existence of an impairment is established, SSA considers all evidence from all medical and nonmedical sources to assess the extent to which a claimant’s impairment(s) affects his or her ability to function in a work setting; or in the case of a child, the ability to function compared to that of children the same age who do not have impairments. Nonmedical sources include, but are not limited to the claimant, educational personnel, public and private social welfare agency personnel, family members, caregivers, friends, neighbors, employers, and clergy.
