If you have applied for Social Security disability payments, your status may not be determined for as much as 5 months. If you are approved, your first Social Security disability payment will be paid for the 6th full month after your disability was reported. All Social Security disability benefits are paid following the month in which they are due, so your payments will begin in the 7th month after your disability.
In the meantime, checking the status of your Social Security disability application is an excellent way to ensure that your application is on track and is not missing any crucial pieces of information which could send you right back to square 1. You can check the status of your application in several different ways. For all Social Security disability payment questions, you will need to provide your Social Security number and application confirmation number.
To check the status of your application online, go to the application status web page and follow the prompts. To check the status of your application by telephone, call the toll-free number 1-800-772-1213 and follow the prompts. If you are deaf and have access to a TTY, use the dedicated TTY toll-free number: 1-800-325-0778. Office hours are from 7 am to 7 pm, Monday to Friday. The 24-hour automated service cannot provide status updates. However, you can use it to update your address, if needed.
You can also check the status of your Social Security disability claim by contacting your state’s Disability Determination Services (DDS). Here, you can speak directly to the disability examiner (DE) who is handling your claim.
Thirty days after submitting an application, call your DE directly to confirm all parts of your medical evidence of record (MER) have been received. Immediately upon receiving your application, your DE wrote to all medical providers listed on your application to request their records on your case. Medical providers are given 2-3 weeks to provide these records. Thus, by 30 days after your application, your MER should be complete.
However, not all medical providers are prompt, and some, such as the Veterans Administration, have been known to provide records which are irrelevant to your claim. In the absence of relevant records, your application will be moved to the next step without them. This makes it much more likely that your claim will be denied.
If any parts of your MER are still outstanding at this time, ask which records are still outstanding, and follow up with those medical providers at once. Try to speak to the medical professional who was handling your case, and then follow up in a few days to ensure that he or she has in fact faxed or mailed the required records. Your Social Security disability claim depends on your MER.
Once the MER is received by your DE, check the status of your claim once each month. After 3 months have passed, increase the frequency of your checks to once every 2 weeks. Most DDSs are understaffed, and checking your status regularly can trigger a faster review.