The medical conditions added to the CAL list are Au-Kline Syndrome, Bilateral Anophthalmia, Carey-Fineman-Ziter Syndrome, Harlequin Ichthyosis—Child, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation, LMNA-related Congenital Muscular Dystrophy, Progressive Muscular Atrophy, Pulmonary Amyloidosis—AL Type, Rasmussen Encephalitis, Thymic Carcinoma, Turnpenny-Fry Syndrome, WHO Grade III Meningiomas, and Zhu-Tokita-Takenouchi-Kim Syndrome.
“By adding these 13 conditions to the Compassionate Allowances list, we are helping more people with devastating diagnoses to quickly receive the support they need,” SSA Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano said.
Bisignano said the updates were part of a broader commitment to make the disability determination process more responsive and improve the disability programs.
With the 13 added conditions, CAL now includes 300 disabilities in total, the SSA said in the statement.
Improving Disability Processes
According to the SSA, the agency uses the same rules to evaluate CAL conditions as it uses to assess Social Security disability insurance and supplemental security income programs.
In its Aug. 11 statement, SSA said that the agency uses its Health IT program to securely access electronic medical records while reviewing CAL applications.
The SSA has taken other steps recently to improve how it handles disability claims.
Average processing time for initial disability claims is now five days faster than before Bisignano’s tenure, it said. Bisignano was confirmed as the 18th SSA commissioner by the Senate in early May.
“The agency handled nearly 1.3 million calls on the national 800 number last week, or 70 percent more than the same week last fiscal year, while reducing the average speed of answer to six minutes,” the agency said.
“These AI programs, which the agency deployed with little consultation with Congress, advocates, or other key stakeholders, appear to have been developed in haste and represent a troubling pattern that if continued, would significantly impede Americans’ ability to access their Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits,” the letter stated.
