If you’re considering filing a disability claim, you might have Social Security questions about what Quick Disability Determinations, or QDDs, are and how they work. As an experienced Social Security Disability attorney, I get these questions all the time.
Basically, when someone has a condition that clearly meets disability standards, Social Security tries hard to ensure that they get benefits quickly. To speed up these claims, conditions that qualify as QDDs bypass the often lengthy approval process most applicants have to go through.
How Do QDDs Work?
At this point, you’re probably wondering how they decide whether or not your condition is a QDD and how the whole thing works.
The quickest explanation is that whenever anyone files a claim, it is sent to the Department of Disability Services (DDS). Once there, they run it through special software created for the Social Security Administration. This software contains what they call a “predictive model.”
Essentially, the software looks for specific things in your application that would make it a QDD and gives your claim a score. If your application gets higher than a particular score, your condition is considered a QDD and will be considered a sort of “rush job” so that you can get your benefits faster.
How fast? Well, they don’t always finish this quickly but the goal is to process QDD cases within 20 days. Any Social Security Disability attorney who’s been doing this for a while will tell you that’s an extremely fast time. In contrast, regular claims often take months—and sometimes even years!
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QDD Not Perfect, But Getting Better
Of course, no system is perfect and there have been issues with QDDs.
Just a few years ago, each DDS office had its own point system for QDDs. That may not seem like cause for concern but in practice it meant that two people with identical disabilities could file claims at different offices and one would be considered a QDD while the other had to go through the normal, much slower process. Thankfully, this was stopped in December of 2011 when the SSA said that all DDS offices needed to use the same point system.
If you have further Social Security questions that you’d like to Texas Social Security Disability Lawyer Marc Whitehead, don’t hesitate to call our offices.
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