What is a Medical Source Statement?
A medical source statement is a statement from your doctor or another health care professional regarding your medical or mental health impairments and the impact they have on what kinds of work related activities you may or may not be able to participate in.
In most cases, the medical source statement should be filled out by your primary care physician.
The Importance of Medical Source Statements
The medical source statement carries a great deal of weight in Social Security Disability cases. Social Security Disability adjudicators are required to place more emphasis on the medical source statement of your primary care physician than on the medical source statements of their own Social Security Disability Medical Examiners.
This is because your personal doctor is expected to have an ongoing patient/doctor relationship with you which gives him greater insight into your condition and symptoms.
In order to be considered current, a medical source statement must be no older than 60 days (for mental health conditions) or six months for medical conditions. The more recent your medical source statement, the better for your Social Security Disability claim.
Before any of the claims or appeals steps, you should make sure that your medical source statements reflect any changes which have occurred, particularly if they have made it even more difficult for you to perform any work.
One example of this would be making sure that the medical source statement states that your back pain makes it impossible for you to sit or stand for prolonged periods of time, or makes it impossible for you to lift more than a certain amount of weight rather than simply noting that you have severe back pain.
Talk to a Social Security Attorney Today
A Social Security Disability attorney can benefit you greatly when your doctor is filling out your medical source statement. By communicating with your doctor, he can help ensure that all symptoms and conditions are stated in the way which is most likely to help your SSD claim.
This includes making sure that all conditions on the medical source statement are stated in a way to include information regarding how the condition or symptom hinders you from working.
