• How Does the Social Security Administration Decide if I Qualify for Disability Benefits for a Hearing Impairment?
• About Hearing Impairments and Disability
• Winning Social Security Disability Benefits for a Hearing Impairment by Meeting a Listing
• Residual Functional Capacity Assessment for Hearing Impairments
• Getting Your Doctor’s Medical Opinion About What You Can Still Do

Residual Functional Capacity Assessment for Hearing Impairments

What Is Residual Functional Capacity (RFC)?

If your hearing impairment is not severe enough to meet or equal a listing at Step 3 of the Sequential Evaluation Process, the Social Security Administration will need to determine your residual functional capacity (RFC) to decide whether you are disabled at Step 4 and Step 5 of the Sequential Evaluation Process.

RFC is a claimant’s ability to perform work-related activities. In other words, it is what you can still do despite your limitations. An RFC for physical impairments is expressed in terms of whether the Social Security Administration believes you can do heavy, medium, light, or sedentary work in spite of your impairments. The lower your RFC, the less the Social Security Administration believes you can do.

Hearing Impairment and Residual Functional Capacity

Although profound deafness in one ear and good hearing in the other is considered to be a “not severe” impairment, most claimants have bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, especially as a result of a lifetime of exposure to loud sounds without adequate hearing protection. If you have good speech discrimination and a better ear pure tone average (PTA) of 40 dB or less, the Social Security Administration will generally find that your hearing impairment is “not severe.”

However, there is no definite medical policy regarding what pure tone average threshold with good discrimination the Social Security Administration would consider “not severe.” Despite the lack of policy, the Social Security Administration would be on medically questionable grounds with a finding that a pure tone average of 50 dB or more in the better ear is “not severe.” Also, speech discrimination of less than 75% should be considered a significant and work-related impairment, although there is no regulatory basis for this position.

Generally, the following values can be used as guidelines for speech discrimination scores:

• 100 – 90% – excellent – normal discrimination
• 89 – 75% – good – slight difficulty sometimes, such as on telephone
• 74 – 60% – fair – moderate difficulty most of the time
• 59 – 40% – poor – difficulty in following conversation
• < 40% – very poor – severe difficulty in conversation most of the time

These discrimination guidelines are not formal Social Security Administration policy because there is no such policy. Also, terms like “mild” or “good” are necessarily arbitrary to some extent, and therefore vary a little in the medical literature. Informed medical and vocational judgment is required for evaluating these claims.

The Residual Functional Capacity may contain some general statement expressing limitation in ability to hear. However, the person establishing the medical (Residual Functional Capacity) part of the determination should communicate clearly to the adjudicator about the vocational determination regarding the functional severity of the hearing deficit. There is a big difference functionally between a person who has a better ear at a 50 dB average hearing threshold with 80% discrimination, and one who has a better ear average hearing loss of 70 dB with a discrimination score of 45%. The former will have minimal functional loss, while the latter cannot do work requiring any significant verbal communication in regard to either speaking or hearing. Social Security Administration vocational analysts generally have little difficulty in citing jobs for hearing-impaired claimants, but one important fact may be overlooked by the Social Security Administration: when a person has near-total deafness, he or she cannot hear verbal warnings and the sounds of dangerous machinery. Therefore, there should be limitations in working around hazardous machinery when hearing impairment could pose a risk to oneself or co-workers.

Another issue is fluctuating hearing loss, as may occur with Meniere’s disease. You might argue that work-related limitations should be based on the worst hearing test results documented in your file. However, there is no Social Security Administration medical policy supporting this position.

Getting Your Doctor’s Opinion About What You Can Still Do

Your Doctor’s Medical Opinion Can Help You Qualify for Social Security Disability Benefits

The Social Security Administration’s job is to determine if you are disabled, a legal conclusion based on your age, education and work experience and medical evidence. Your doctor’s role is to provide the Social Security Administration with information concerning the degree of your medical impairment. Your doctor’s description of your capacity for work is called a medical source statement and the Social Security Administration’s conclusion about your work capacity is called a residual functional capacity assessment. Residual functional capacity is what you can still do despite your limitations. The Social Security Administration asks that medical source statements include a statement about what you can still do despite your impairments.

The Social Security Administration must consider your treating doctor’s opinion and, under appropriate circumstances, give it controlling weight.

The Social Security Administration evaluates the weight to be given your doctor’s opinion by considering:

• The nature and extent of the treatment relationship between you and your doctor.
• How well your doctor knows you.
• The number of times your doctor has seen you.
• Whether your doctor has obtained a detailed picture over time of your impairment.
• Your doctor’s specialization.
• The kinds and extent of examinations and testing performed by or ordered by your doctor.
• The quality of your doctor’s explanation of your impairment.
• The degree to which your doctor’s opinion is supported by relevant evidence, particularly medically acceptable clinical and laboratory diagnostic techniques.
• How consistent your doctor’s opinion is with other evidence.

When to Ask Your Doctor for an Opinion

If your application for Social Security disability benefits has been denied and you have appealed, you should get a medical source statement (your doctor’s opinion about what you can still do) from your doctor to use as evidence at the hearing.

When is the best time to request an opinion from your doctor? Many disability attorneys wait until they have reviewed the file and the hearing is scheduled before requesting an opinion from the treating doctor. This has two advantages.

• First, by waiting until your attorney has fully reviewed the file, he or she will be able to refine the theory of why you cannot work and will be better able to seek support for this theory from the treating doctor.
• Second, the report will be fresh at the time of the hearing.

But this approach also has some disadvantages.

• When there is a long time between the time your attorney first sees you and the time of the hearing, a lot of things can happen. You can improve and go back to work. Your lawyer can still seek evidence that you were disabled for a certain length of time. But then your lawyer will be asking the doctor to describe your ability to work at some time in the past, something that not all doctors are good at.
• You might change doctors, or worse yet, stop seeing doctors altogether because your medical insurance has run out. When your attorney writes to a doctor who has not seen you recently, your attorney runs the risk that the doctor will be reluctant to complete the form. Doctors seem much more willing to provide opinions about current patients than about patients whom they have not seen for a long time.

Here is an alternative. Suggest that your attorney request your doctor to complete a medical opinion form on the day you retain your attorney. This will provide a snapshot description of your residual functional capacity (RFC) early in the case. If you improve and return to work, the description of your RFC provides a basis for showing that you were disabled for a specific period. If you change doctors, your attorney can get an opinion from the new doctor, too. If you stop seeing doctors, at least your attorney has one treating doctor opinion and can present your testimony at the hearing to establish that you have not improved.

If you continue seeing the doctor but it has been a long time since the doctor’s opinion was obtained, just before the hearing your attorney can send the doctor a copy of the form completed earlier, along with a blank form and a cover letter asking the doctor to complete a new form if your condition has changed significantly. If not, your attorney can ask the doctor to send a one-line letter that says there have been no significant changes since the date the earlier form was completed.

There are times, though, that your attorney needs to consider not requesting a report early in the case.

• First, depending on the impairment, if you have not been disabled for twelve months, it is usually better that your attorney wait until the twelve-month duration requirement is met.
• Second, if you just began seeing a new doctor, it is usually best to wait until the doctor is more familiar with your condition before requesting an opinion.
• Third, if there are competing diagnoses or other diagnostic uncertainties, it is usually best that your attorney wait until the medical issues are resolved before requesting an opinion.
• Fourth, a really difficult judgment is involved if your medical history has many ups and downs, e.g., several acute phases, perhaps including hospitalizations, followed by significant improvement. Your attorney needs to request an opinion at a time when the treating doctor will have the best longitudinal perspective on your impairment.

Medical Opinion Forms

Medical opinion forms can be great time savers for both your attorney and your doctor, but they must be used with care. Forms may not be appropriate at all in complex cases; and they need to be supplemented in many cases so that all issues are addressed. The best forms are clear and complete but not too long.

When the time is right, here is a form for your disability attorney to use: