Continuing with my discussion of the SSA disability evaluation process, today I am going to talk about Step 3, the Listing of Impairments.

Social Security’s Listings of Impairments is exactly what the name implies.  It is a list of severe conditions that contains criteria for medical signs, findings and symptoms.  If your medical condition meets these criteria then you are found disabled at this step and the analysis stops.  However, proof that your condition satisfies the criteria can be difficult to establish.  Objective medical records from your treating doctors are critical to be successful at this step.  The Listing criteria are very specific and require a relatively high level of severity.  Your medical records must contain the exact information required by the Listing, or demonstrate an equivalency to the required information.  Because of the specificity requirements of the medical evidence and because of the severity level that must be established by the evidence, many claimants who have been diagnosed with a condition named in the Listings will not be found disabled at this step.  This is often because of poor records keeping by your medical providers or because your condition has not yet advanced to the level required by the Listings for presumptive disability.

Don’t be discouraged, though.  The Listing step is unique.  If you can’t prove that your condition meets the requirements of the Listings, the evaluation does not stop at this step and it does not mean that Social Security will not find you disabled.  You still get to move on to step 4 of the evaluation.  We’ll talk about that in SSA Disability Basics Part 5.

If you want to see what conditions are covered in the Listings and how complicated the criteria are, you can take a look at them here.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Hartup