If your incurred bodily injury is serious, your treating physician may prescribe physical therapy sessions. In these rehabilitative sessions, with the guidance of a therapist, you may work towards improving your mobility and minimizing the source of pain in your injured body part. While you may know this will work wonders for your overall quality of life, you may worry about tacking on another expense to your already lengthy medical bills. If this is the case, you may wonder whether government-funded benefits programs can assist you, like Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits. For this, please read on to discover whether your SSDI benefits can work to cover the cost of your physical therapy appointments and how a seasoned New Jersey Medicare & Medicaid attorney at The Law Offices of Sheryl Gandel Mazur can help you manage your financial aid appropriately.
Can SSDI benefits cover the cost of my physical therapy?
In short, SSDI benefits may not directly cover the cost of your prescribed physical therapy sessions. That is, these monthly payments are supposed to replace a portion of your lost income. So they should be used to pay for all your daily living expenses (i.e., housing, utilities, food, transportation, etc.), not just your medical bills. However, if you budget accordingly, you may successfully use these funds to at least partially cover your physical therapy treatments, co-pays, deductibles, etc.
It is also worth mentioning the possibility that you qualify for Medicare alongside SSDI benefits. This is if you are younger than 65 but have been collecting SSDI benefits for at least 24 months. In this case, you may receive Medicare Part B coverage, which should compensate you for the cost of your outpatient physical therapy sessions. Here, though, your treating physician must give a certifiable referral that your current health condition makes these sessions medically necessary.
Can attending physical therapy help my SSDI benefits application?
On the flip side of this scenario, say that you have not yet submitted your SSDI benefits application to the Social Security Administration (SSA). Well, attending medically necessary physical therapy sessions may serve as pivotal proof for your claim. With this, your treating physical therapist may perform and disclose a functional assessment, which establishes how your current health condition disrupts your ability to perform personal and work-related activities.
What’s more, you may be able to prove that the frequency with which you have been prescribed physical therapy sessions hinders your ability to maintain substantial gainful employment activity. Secondly, you may show that your treating physician originally prescribed physical therapy sessions for 12 months or longer. This further solidifies that you meet the SSDI benefits eligibility criteria of having a disability that has lasted or is anticipated to last for at least this long.
If you need help preparing for this upcoming SSDI benefits application process, turn to a competent attorney competent in SSDI eligibility in New Jersey. We at The Law Offices of Sheryl Gandel Mazur have gone through this countless times before, and we are ready to go through it again to support you.
