Four Necessary Elements of a Winning Back Pain Disability Claim

What are the four things you must have in your file if you hope to win Social Security Disability benefits for extreme back pain or spinal injury? Hi, I'm Jonathan Ginsberg. I'm a Social Security Disability Attorney, and in the current climate where it's really difficult to win disability benefits, my experience has been you need four things at a minimum if you hope to win a back pain disability case. Number one is you need to have an MRI that shows something significant. I'm specifically talking about the lumbar spine because the cervical spine or neck is going to be a little different, but in the lumbar spine, L5-S1 or lumbar 2-3-4, you need to have an MRI report that shows either a disc herniation with nerve root impingement or a serious disc bulge, again with nerve root or nerve irritation. Because if a judge is going to believe that you have pain radiating into your legs or severe back pain, it needs to be backed up by something objective, i.e. an MRI or perhaps a CT scan. If you don't have an MRI and you go in with x-rays or simply with doctor's reports, it's going to be very, very difficult to win because judges these days are looking for objective evidence. So I realize MRIs can be expensive, but you simply have to have an MRI report, ideally one that's relatively recent within the last year to two years. Again, you can have them that are a little bit older, but the judge will then question whether or not your condition has spontaneously gotten better. So obviously, at least one MRI, ideally two or three MRIs that show some sort of a significant pathology, either a herniated disc or a bulging disc that has some sort of a nerve root issue or shows spinal stenosis or something objective that can be corresponded to the pain you're experiencing. The second thing I think you need to have is evidence in your medical record that conservative treatment has failed. Conservative treatment are things like physical therapy, it could be epidurals, it could be facet joint injections, things like that. So typically what a doctor will do is before even thinking about surgery, will send you to physical therapy or give you injections and you need to have evidence, in my view, that those attempts of conservative treatment have failed. Now ideally, if you are a surgical candidate, that makes your case stronger. If the doctor's reports say that, yes, this person needs to have surgery, that makes your case stronger. Social security will not punish you for not having surgery. And if you have surgery, obviously there's going to be a period of time after surgery where you'll be deemed unable to work. But then after that, the question is, have you improved to the point where you could work? And that may be a situation where we look at a closed period. But even if you don't have surgery, having evidence that you tried, whether it's medications, pain management, physical therapy, injections, all those things can be very, very helpful. You need to have evidence that your condition impacts your capacity to work. And this would be both testimony from you as well as reports from your doctor. And evidence might be that you have pain radiating into your legs such that you cannot walk more than a few yards, or you need assistive devices like a cane or a walker, something like that. But again, the medical record needs to translate the medical issues into work limitations. And that leads me to number four, and that is a really important factor that you need to have in your file, is support from your doctor. And again, this is something we can get as we get closer to the hearing, but a functional capacity evaluation, a narrative report, something from the doctor that basically says this individual would not be reliable because of these factors. This person would miss excessive days from work, two or three days of work a month, or need to take unscheduled breaks, or need to have legs extended, or needs to walk around every 15 or 20 minutes. And there's any number of things, or has a level of pain that interferes with attention and concentration, or has such pain that this person would not be able to get through the workday without emotionally breaking down, because obviously depression can go along with back pain as well. So you need to have some form of support from your doctor, a treating doctor, that goes a long way. So if you have these four things, no guarantee you're going to win, but at least you're giving the judge everything he or she needs to issue an approval, because your case would be objectively supported by evidence as opposed to simply your testimony or unsupported evidence, opinion evidence from your doctor. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube, like it on Facebook, subscribe to our YouTube channel. I've got a little over 250 videos there. I think you'll find very, very helpful. And if you haven't already done so, go to my website at ssdanswers.com and download your free Secrets to Winning Disability Survival Kit. I put a lot of effort into that. I'm updating it on a regular basis. And again, I think you'll find that very useful as well. So for now, this is Jonathan Ginsburg, wishing you the best. Thanks a lot. Hi, this is Jonathan Ginsburg, and I hope you found this video helpful. If you'd like to know more about how to win your social security disability case, I'd like to invite you to download my Secrets to Getting Approved Early Survival Kit that I created just for people like you. Currently, I'm making this survival kit available at no cost, and I encourage you to grab your copy now. Some of the topics I cover include how do I know if I have a case? Is it the right time for me to file my claim? Nine common mistakes that can doom your case. The three must have arguments you use to win your case and a topic that every disability claimant wants to know, how to avoid trick questions from the judge. If you or a loved one need to win social security disability benefits, you'll find this survival kit essential reading. Download your survival kit right now at no cost. Just visit ssdanswers.com backslash survival and sign up. It's that easy. Please act now. And as always, I wish you the best.