Treating CE

The Social Security Administration (“SSA”) usually asks a claimant to have a consultative examination (“CE”) when applying for Social Security Disability (“SSD”) benefits.  According to the SSA regulations, a claimant’s medical source is the preferred source to do the CE.

We represent a 54 year old production coordinator and warehouseman with knee impairments, whose SSD application was approved today.  Because of his knee problems, the only possible category of work the claimant could perform would be sedentary work. If the claimant were limited to sedentary work, then under the Grid rules, the claimant still would have to be found disabled if he lacked transferable skills.

The SSA asked the claimant to attend a CE, which was performed by the claimant’s orthopedist.  The orthopedist completed SSA’s form DDD-3883, and the information provided would preclude even sedentary work, which meant that it was not even necessary to determine if the claimant had transferable skills.  The SSD application was approved shortly after the CE report was submitted.