Military service members can receive expedited processing of disability claims from Social Security. Social Security benefits are different than those from the Department of Veterans Affairs require and separate application process. The expedited process for Social Security applicant is for military service members who become disabled while on active military service on or after October 1, 2001, regardless of where the disability occurs.
The Social Security Administration and the Department of Defense (DoD) are working together to improve access to disability benefits for the nation’s Wounded Warriors, service members, veterans, and their dependents. This new nationwide project allows Social Security processing sites to receive military medical records from multiple Department of Defense facilities with a single request to a centralized Department of Defense website.
“Receiving electronic medical records for our Wounded Warriors and other military personnel will significantly shorten the time it takes to make a disability decision,” said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. “This new process will improve the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of the disability program.”
Originally the program was piloted in five states (Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington) with more than 60 military treatment facilities. These states are now receiving electronic medical records within 72 hours, which is a substantial improvement over the prior average response time which was five weeks for paper records from each individual military treatment facility.
The benefits of the new process include: faster delivery of medical records to Social Security, a more efficient system to obtain records, a reduction in the time it takes to make a medical decision and a reduction in the number of consultative examinations (medical exams requested by Social Security when additional tests or medical records are needed.)
This is the first step towards the long-term goal of a fully automated solution to improve medical information sharing using health information technology.
