Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

September/October, 1998

“WHAT MY PATIENT CAN DO”
by Anne Graham, SSA

PATRICK CAULFIELD, MD, A PROFESSOR of Family Practice at the Albany Medical Center, spoke at the Northeast Mid Atlantic Bi-regional Training Conference about the assessment of a patient’s function. As both a practitioner and teacher of family medicine, he saw this as an important issue. Because family practitioners treat patients from the cradle to the grave, it is within their purview to provide appropriate guidance to patients about if and when they should apply for disability benefits. Then it is necessary to supply medical evidence to support the individual’s application. In the general medical community, there is not a great deal known about the Social Security Disability program. He provided copies of one journal article about the disability program. It was in the March 1995 issue of Southern Medical Journal and was written by Henry Scovern, MD, of Philadelphia. The article addressed the evaluation of physical impairments in adults, indicating that evaluation of disability in children and of people with psychiatric impairments was different. The focus was on informing doctors of the kinds of evidence required and how the evidence would be used. Dr. Caulfield believes that a resident in family practice should be given training in disability evaluation. His recommended core educational guidelines would require a knowledge of such things as the definition of disability and the process used in evaluating claims, the role of the primary physician, and the listings for adults and children. The residents should be taught to complete disability-related paperwork in a timely fashion and send it in. It would appear that those who complete Dr. Caulfield’s residency program will have all the tools necessary to provide useful medical evidence for their patients applying for disability benefits.