Increase SSI/SSDI Approval Rates
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| COVID-19 RESOURCES FOR SOAR PROVIDERS |
SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR) is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and is a national program designed to increase access to the disability income benefit programs administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) for eligible adults and children who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness and have a serious mental illness, medical impairment, and/or a co-occurring substance use disorder.
Watch the video below and then read more about SOAR!
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Recent Questions About SOAR
Q: What form do we need signed from the applicant to be able to speak to a friend or relative for additional functioning information?
A.
A general privacy release can be used to communicate about the applicant to friends/relatives/other service providers, etc. This can be the SOAR sample (even if it is not for medical records) or a more generic one. Here is another example from CSH. Most agencies have a privacy release that they use...
Q: Can someone be eligible for disability if they have never worked?
A.
The short answer is "No" for SSDI and "Yes" for SSI! If the applicant has never worked, they will not be eligible for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). SSDI eligibility criteria require that you have worked long enough and recently enough to be insured for Social Security disability...
Q: I received a notice with a patient’s alcohol and drug abuse records that I could not “further disclose” the information. How can I send them on to SSA?
A.
When providers of substance use services (drug and alcohol) release records, they are required to include the following notice from the CFR Title 42:2.32: “This information has been disclosed to you from records protected by Federal confidentiality rules (42 CFR part 2). The Federal rules prohibit...
Q: In the SOAR Online Course practice case, I inadvertently loaded blank forms 827 & 1696. It will not let me delete those and upload the completed ones. What do I do?
A.
If you go back to the Practice Case in Class 2 you should be able to click the red "Remove" button to remove the blank forms and re-upload the completed versions. If you have already submitted your entire application packet in Class 7 you will not be able to make any of the changes online. However...