The Social Security Administration (SSA) is committed to providing benefits quickly to claimants whose medical conditions are so serious that they clearly meet Social Security’s strict disability standards. Social Security’s two fast-track processes, Quick Disability Determination (QDD) and Compassionate Allowances (CAL), use technology to identify claimants with the most severe disabilities and allow SSA to expedite its decisions on those cases while maintaining accuracy. These initiatives have been two of Social Security’s greatest successes in recent years. SSA can approve some cases in a matter of days instead of months.
The QDD process uses a computer-based predictive model to screen initial applications to identify cases where a favorable disability determination is highly likely and medical evidence is readily available. By identifying QDD claims early in the process, SSA can prioritize this workload and expedite case processing. Social Security has used QDD nationally since February 2008. It continues to refine the QDD predictive model to maximize its capacity to identify accurately these cases so that Social Security can expand the QDD process to serve additional claimants.
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