Dire Need

According to Social Security, a dire need situation exists when a claimant alleges any of the following circumstances:

• The claimant is without food and is unable to obtain it.
• The claimant lacks medicine or medical care and is unable to obtain it, or access to necessary medical care is restricted because of a lack of resources.
• The claimant lacks shelter (e.g., without utilities such that their home is uninhabitable, homelessness, expiration of a shelter stay, or imminent eviction or foreclosure with no means to remedy the situation or obtain shelter).

Absent evidence to the contrary, accept a person's allegation that the person does not have enough income or resources to meet an immediate threat to their health or safety.  HO employees will err on the side of designating the case critical.

Despite the above, many requests to have a claim classified as a dire need case are ignored by the assigned analyst.

We represent a 58 year old with multiple foot, spine and wrist problems from Valley Stream who worked as an electrician.  We were able to obtain strong evidence from the claimant’s pain management specialist.  The claimant qualified as a dire need case because his utilities were being shut off.  However, the case was languishing because the analyst was holding dire need status hostage.

The analyst refused to tag the case as a dire need because he wanted to the claimant to attend a consultative examination (“CE”) with IMA. We had to escalate the matter above the analyst’s head, who claimed there was nothing he could do.  We succeeded in getting the supervisor to expedite the case, which was approved in about 10 days, without the need for a CE.

The claimant is so happy that he retained us, and that we had the experience and knowledge to do what was needed to get his claim expedited.   This is just another of many reasons why you should retain an experienced disability attorney to represent you if you plan on filing for Social Security Disability benefits.   If we hadn't known what to do, our claimant's case would still be sitting there.

If you are planning on applying for Social Security Disability benefits, please call our office for a free phone consultation at (888) 572-0861.  Our offices are conveniently located in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island.