How to Prove Your Social Security Disability Claim for Back Pain or Injury

What are the effective ways to help you prove your social security disability claim when you're filing with a back injury or back pain? Hi, my name is Chris Shari. I'm a social security disability attorney. We help claimants with applications and hearings in all 50 states. So today we're going to talk about how to prove your disability claim with a back injury. It's going to be many different tips or strategies on helping you show the severity of your back injury. These are going to be four of the more important tips or strategies that we've helped our clients with. The first is having a recent diagnostic test, like an x-ray or an MRI. So if your last test was done, say, four or five years ago or longer, you're going to want to ask your doctor to be referred for a more recent test result. So whether that's an x-ray or an MRI, an MRI would be preferable. An MRI is going to show more detail than an x-ray, but either is going to be a big help in showing the severity of your back injury. The second tip is trying to keep a pain diary or a pain log. So documenting your pain is going to be very important in your social security disability application. When you see your doctor monthly or quarterly, yes, you're going to be telling him or her about your pain and that's going to be documented. But if you are experiencing pain on a daily basis, that's not going to be documented if it's only shown in your records every month or every quarter. So keeping a pain diary or pain log is very important. You can document when during the day you're suffering from that pain, how long it's lasted, you know, whether you need to lie down, if you're taking medication to relieve the pain. So this goes into great detail that you can document on a daily basis. So that is very important. The third tip is following any conservative treatment that you are referred to. So with your back injury, back pain, you may be referred to physical therapy, may be referred to pain management, injections. These are all very important to follow if that is prescribed by your doctor and most likely is going to be prescribed prior to any surgery. So you do not want to be referred and refuse that type of treatment that will be noted in any application or any hearing. The last is trying to get a statement or an opinion from your provider, whether that be your primary care physician for mental health, whether that's a therapist or prescriber or your specialist. So with a back injury claim, that may be your primary care, maybe a chiropractor, physical therapy or your surgeon. When you go to your doctor, you are going to be talking about your treatment. Your doctor is going to be documenting the examination and what the course of treatment will be. Most likely it's not going to be, they're not going to be documenting how this is affecting your ability to work. So a medical source statement is going to give social security all the information they need to be able to determine how your back injury or back pain affects your ability to work. So a medical source statement is critical in social security disability claims. So again, these are not the only tips or strategies. These are just four of the more important strategies that we've helped claimants with through their application and hearings. So if you have any questions on your application or hearing, please give our office a call. We'll be happy to help. Thank you.