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    We Represent People With:

  • Physical Disabilities and Impairments, Psychiatric and Mental Disorders, Bipolar, PTSD, Deafness, Blindness, HIV/Aids, Cancer, Epilepsy, Schizophrenia, Depression, Mental Retardation, Cerebral palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Herniated Disk, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Arthritis, Stroke, Seizures, Hepatitis, Heart and Lung disease, Meniere's Disease, Crohn's Disease, Colitis, L.B.S., Myasthenia Gravis, Severe Headaches and Sleep Disorders, Amputation, Vocational Disabilities, MRSA who have wrongfully been denied their benefits.
Home :: FAQ :: Physicians Issues and Answers

As a physician, I treat patients. Don’t these RFCs have to be completed by a Social Security Doctor, or as a consequence of "Functional Capacity Evaluations" done at testing facilities?

No.   The Rules of the Social Security Administration explicitly give a claimant’s treating physician not only the permission to complete these forms but give the forms conscientiously completed by the claimant’s treating physician “Great Weight” in determining whether or not the claimant is disabled.  Functional capacity testing at an outside facility is not necessary and is not engaged in by the SSA.  One of the reasons is that these tests are performed by people who are not physicians and who may have a subjective predeliction toward weighing the results And by rendering an opinion that, though “technical”, is not a medical one.  In the past, before the number of ALJs became too few to handle the case overload, the ALJs would send a claimant’s treating physician similar questionnaires to complete.  With the advent of the baby boom becoming infirm, there is just not enough time and manpower in the SSA to send these out.  Unfortunately, the lack of personnel at SSA has caused the privatization of the process forcing attorneys and representatives for the claimant to do what once was a government function paid for by our tax dollars.