Is there anything that can be done to speed up the process?

There are certain “critical” situations which, if drawn to SSA’s attention, can result in a case being resolved more quickly.

The claimant is terminally ill – these cases can be approved in about a week upon submission of medical evidence documenting that the claimant is not expected to survive more than 12 months;
The claimant is a military serviceman/servicewoman injured during active duty on or after October 1, 2001,
The claimant’s illness falls within Social Security’s “Compassionate Allowance” program.

This program was designed to allow for quick approval of claims involving conditions that SSA feels will invariably meet the disability standards. These cases can be approved in about a week upon submission of objective medical information confirming the diagnosis. When the program was first implemented, fifty conditions were identified as qualifying for Compassionate Allowances. SSA has been holding public outreach hearings on whether to add other conditions to this list (such as Traumatic Brain Injury/Stroke, Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease and Schizophrenia), For now, however, only the originally-announced 50 conditions qualify for Compassionate Allowances.:

1	Acute Leukemia
2	Adrenal Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
3	Alexander Disease (ALX) – Neonatal and Infantile
4	Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”)
5	Anaplastic Adrenal Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
6	Astrocytoma – Grade III and IV
7	Bladder Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
8	Bone Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
9	Breast Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
10	Canavan Disease (CD)
11	Cerebro Oculo Facio Skeletal (COFS) Syndrome
12	Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) – Blast Phase
13	Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) – Adult
14	Ependymoblastoma (Child Brain Tumor)
15	Esophageal Cancer
16	Farber’s Disease (FD) – Infantile
17	Friedreichs Ataxia (FRDA)
18	Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Picks Disease -Type A – Adult
19	Gallbladder Cancer
20	Gaucher Disease (GD) – Type 2
21	Glioblastoma Multiforme (Brain Tumor)
22	Head and Neck Cancers – with distant metastasis or inoperable or unresectable
23	Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy (INAD)
24	Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC)
25	Kidney Cancer – inoperable or unresectable
26	Krabbe Disease (KD) – Infantile
27	Large Intestine Cancer – with distant metastasis or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
28	Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome (LNS)
29	Liver Cancer
30	Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL)
31	Metachromatic Leukodystrophy (MLD) – Late Infantile
32	Niemann-Pick Disease (NPD) – Type A
33	Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer – with metastases to or beyond the hilar nodes or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
34	Ornithine Transcarbamylase (OTC) Deficiency
35	Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) – Type II
36	Ovarian Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
37	Pancreatic Cancer
38	Peritoneal Mesothelioma
39	Pleural Mesothelioma
40	Pompe Disease – Infantile
41	Rett (RTT) Syndrome
42	Salivary Tumors
43	Sandhoff Disease
44	Small Cell Cancer (of the Large Intestine, Ovary, Prostate, or Uterus)
45	Small Cell Lung Cancer
46	Small Intestine Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
47	Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) – Types 0 And 1
48	Stomach Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
49	Thyroid Cancer
50	Ureter Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent

4. Claimant is facing dire financial circumstances.

Let’s face it…most people applying for Social Security disability benefits are facing some type of economic hardship. After all, being unable to work for an extended period of time is usually not the ticket to Easy Street, especially when the medical bills start mounting up.

All of this makes no difference whatsoever to the SSA at the Initial and Reconsideration stages of a disability claim. Once a case gets to the hearing level, however, it is possible to request an expedited hearing with the ALJ if you are in imminent danger of foreclosure, eviction, or deteriorating medical condition due to lack of access to medical treatment. If you are successful in having SSA grant your dire needs request, the most that you can hope for is to have your hearing scheduled a few months earlier than it would have been without the dire needs request.

With the recent well-publicized backlogs at local hearing offices (and an increase in the number of claimants making such requests), it has become increasingly difficult to get a dire needs request granted in Indiana. Still, if you want to pursue a dire needs request, you should write the letter (attaching copies of eviction, foreclosure, and utility cut-off notices) and forward it to our office. These letters are more compelling when they are in the claimant’s own words.

5. The claimant is suicidal or homicidal