Hi I’m Sharon Christie your nurse attorney for Social Security disability benefits. If you’ve been denied after you filed your application and it’s your first denial you need to file an appeal. It’s called a request for reconsideration. . 

Now always remember that you have a deadline you must file any appeal within 60 days of the date you receive the denial letter. That’s a hard and fast rule. There can be some exceptions but it’s up to Social Security to grant you an exception. You never want to miss that deadline but I’m often asked well what about Social Security what’s their deadline for deciding my appeal? Say the request for reconsideration level. Well, the answer is Social Security does not have a specific deadline. I can tell you that in general at the reconsideration stage your case is going to go through the same process it did at the initial stage.

The first stage except with a whole new group of people at Social Security. So, your case will get assigned to a different examiner at disability determination services and your case will be reviewed by different medical people who are doctors who work for Social Security so it will be different people reviewing your case and they will review any new information that comes in to the case. At the reconsideration stage in my experience, it typically takes about six months from the time you file the reconsideration to get an answer. Can it be shorter? Yes, it can be and I’ve certainly had that experience. Can it be longer? Yes, but it’s important that you’re keeping on top of your case to find out why it’s taking longer.  

So, for example we’ve had situations where our Social Security decided you know we’ve looked at this case but we want this person to be seen by another doctor and so they want to set up a consultative examination or social security could have questions about your work history. So, they decide you know what we need to get more information before we can continue to process this case. So, there’s any number of things along those lines where Social Security is trying to get additional information that could delay the process. Why do I tell you it’s very important that you or for us you know in my office your paralegal is responsible for staying on top of your case? Just to make sure it’s moving and didn’t fall through the cracks. We’ve had cases take eight nine months sometimes longer at the reconsideration level because there’s been a lot of other activity going on in the case trying to get more information.  

In general, it should take about six months if after you filed a request for reconsideration. If 60 days goes by and you haven’t heard anything at all from anybody at Social Security get on the phone and make a phone call. Find out what’s happening with your case because within the first 60 days you should certainly should hear at least to your new examiner’s. The best thing that you can do during this process is be proactive or even better than that hire an experienced disability lawyer to handle all of this for you.