Medical Impairment Overview

The Medical Impairment task is used to document disability, blindness, or incapacity for persons on AABD/MED, ADC/MED, Expert System Medical, or FSP program cases.

Medical Impairment information may be entered by the worker or from Social Security interface information.

AABD and Medical Programs:

Medical Impairment is mandatory for all participants aged 64 years or less (not including the month the participant turns 65) in an AABD/MED program case with a status of active, pending, or ineligible. It is also mandatory for all such participants in any MED only case with a generic AABD related category, in a status of active, pending, spenddown, or ineligible.

The State Review Team makes the determination of blindness or disability used to establish SRT-Disabled and SRT-Blind eligibility.

The Social Security Administration makes the determination of blindness or disability to establish SSI-SSA Disabled and SSI-SSA Blind eligibility.

The only valid types for AABD or AABD/MED related categories are;

SRT-Blind
SRT-Disabled
SSA-SSI Blind
SSA-SSI Disabled

FSP

The Food Stamp Program uses the Medical Impairment task to established the disability indicator that is used to calculate shelter expenses, to exempt a person from the gross income test, and to allow medical expenses.

In addition to SRT- Blind, SRT-Disabled, SSI-SSA Blind and SSI-SSA Disabled the following types of Medical Impairment are valid for Food Stamp cases:

Gov/Retirement
Railroad Retirement
VA Disabled
VA Aid & Attendance

Food Stamp budgeting uses the medical impairment information only when it has been verified.

ADC-Incapacity [ADC-I]

The Medical State Review Team makes the determination of incapacity which must be expected to last at least 30 days.

Social Security Administration BDE (Bendex for SSA claims) and SDX (State Data Exchange for SSI claims) interface with N-FOCUS; they create and update instances of Medical Impairment. The N-FOCUS user is not allowed to update a medical impairment created by interface, however interface data will update user created data.

A person can have more than one medical impairment at the same time providing they are of different types. Verification dating must always match the related medical determination.