Getting a diagnosis for liver disease can send you reeling. Things go downhill from there as the symptoms of the disease make it impossible to hold down a job.
Rising medical bills and no income to pay them leads you to file a disability claim with the Social Security Administration (SSA). However, the SSA has dealt you another blow.
Receiving a denial letter from the SSA is a common occurrence, as the agency denies a majority of disability claims. If the SSA denied Social Security with liver disease, you can file an appeal that includes more persuasive evidence and the results of a Residual Functional Capacity (RFC) assessment.
How Severe is Your Liver Disease Symptoms?
According to the Blue Book put out by the SSA, liver disease symptoms are covered under Section 5.05, which discusses chronic liver disease.
If you have received a diagnosis for liver disease, the diagnosis itself is not enough to qualify you for Social Security disability benefits. You also have to prove the disease has triggered severe symptoms that have adversely affected your life.
Liver disease can produce a large number of symptoms, some of which like itchy skin does not ever become severe enough to warrant the approval of a disability appeal.
What you need to do is prove the existence of serious liver disease symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, intense abdominal pain, and large swelling on the legs and ankles. Other potentially dangerous symptoms of liver disease include nausea and loss of appetite.
Diagnostic Tests to Reverse a Liver disease Denied Disability Claim
The results of diagnostic tests prove the development of liver disease. Your physician can conduct liver function tests to detect specific problems in the liver. Imaging tests like an MRI and a CT scan can show the extent of damage to the liver.
Removing tissue samples from your liver also helps your doctor determine whether you suffer from liver disease. If your diagnostic tests are not conclusive enough to win an appeal for a liver disease disability claim, then you should undergo a Residual Functional Capacity (RFC) assessment.
Overview of an RFC for Liver Disease
An RFC for liver disease measures how much the disease has impacted your career. You might have to go through a battery of physical tests to determine how much pain the disease has generated in your abdomen.
Just attempting a few sit-ups can shine the light on the development of your liver disease. A medical examiner from the RFC might measure your weight and then measure it again a couple of weeks later to determine whether a loss of appetite has caused you to dramatically lose weight. The RFC assessment that you complete should reflect the type of job functions that you perform regularly.
Next Steps to Take
If you have been denied with liver disease, you should schedule a free case evaluation to determine how to strengthen your claim.
Your attorney can request more medical documentation from your physician, as well as ask your doctor to write down a prognosis for your condition. A highly negative prognosis for your liver disease symptoms can lead to a reversal of your denied with liver disease claim.
The day you received the denial letter from the SSA was the day that started the clock on your appeal. You have 60 days to file an appeal and the sooner you submit all the right paperwork, the sooner you should get a decision from the SSA.
