Cerner and Social Security Administration collaborate on disability claims process

MARI DEVEREAUX / February 17, 2022

Cerner has entered an agreement with the U.S. Social Security Administration to help simplify its processing of patient disability benefits claims through the retrieval of medical information from health systems' electronic health records.

Together, the organizations will attempt to shorten the transfer time of relevant, patient-directed medical records being sent from health systems to the Social Security Administration, potentially cutting down the process from weeks or months to seconds or minutes, Cerner announced on Tuesday.

Currently, around 8 million people receive disabled-worker benefits from Social Security, and each year the administration asks healthcare providers for more than 15 million medical records, usually in the form of a fax or mailed images, in order to make decisions on disability claims.

The nature of this process is cumbersome, and using physical copies of information can cause significant delays in determining disability insurance eligibility, said Sam Lambson, vice president of interoperability at Cerner.

Automating data and creating a centralized network will work to ease administrative processing burdens, reduce costs and remove the need for paper records, he said, allowing for faster disability decisions and quicker access to coverage.