Two disability-hearing forms Social Security currently keeps separate would merge into a single document under a proposal the agency published September 24, a change that would touch an estimated 760,420 people who file one or both forms in a given year. The combined form, still called HA-4631, would ask a claimant appealing a disability denial to list recent medical treatment, current medications, healthcare providers and any hospitalizations in one submission instead of two. Social Security says advocates for claimants’ representatives requested the streamlined approach, and the agency is taking public comments on the proposal through November 23.
Different form, same case file: A single HA-4631 would replace two disability-hearing documents, but an appeal still runs on the same medical and financial paperwork tracked by the review and reporting steps and the income and resource organizer in The SSI & Disability Action Kit. Track the reporting steps for a case →
What the combined HA-4631 would ask claimants to submit
Under the current system, a disability-hearing claimant fills out two separate documents: Form HA-4631, Claimant’s Recent Medical Treatment, and Form HA-4632, Claimant’s Medications. The proposal folds both into a single revised HA-4631 that asks for the same categories of information at once: a list of recent medical treatment, current medications, the names of recent physicians and healthcare providers, the dates of recent visits, and any hospitalizations since the claimant last updated Social Security or its disability determination service on their medical situation.
The notice does not change what information Social Security ultimately wants for a disability hearing; it changes how many separate documents a claimant or their representative has to fill out and keep consistent to provide it. A claimant currently has to line up two forms’ worth of dates and provider names with each other, since medications and treatment history usually reference the same appointments, and a mismatch between the two existing forms is the kind of detail a hearing office can flag before a case is decided.
Nothing in the proposal alters the substantive medical evidence a disability judge weighs at a hearing. The combined HA-4631 is a data-collection form, not a change to the legal standard Social Security uses to decide whether a claimant is disabled, and the notice does not suggest otherwise. A claimant with a strong medical record under the current two-form system is not made stronger or weaker by how many documents that record arrives on.
Why advocates asked for one form instead of two
Social Security’s own language on the request is specific: the agency is “proposing this new, combined, streamlined approach at the request of advocates for representatives of Social Security claimants.” That framing credits the idea to people who represent claimants professionally, rather than to an internal efficiency review the agency initiated on its own.
The estimated 760,420 respondents break down by how the paperwork reaches Social Security: the notice separately counts submissions through the agency’s Upload Documents portal and paper or PDF filing, and submissions that come in through Electronic Records Express, the system many claimant representatives already use to send hearing-office documents. Combining two forms into one would not change which channel a filer uses, only how many separate documents move through it.
A claimant filing directly, without a representative, faces the same consolidation. The proposed HA-4631 does not distinguish between a self-represented claimant and one working with an attorney or advocate; both would submit the same single combined document once the change takes effect, if it does, and neither group gains a separate, simplified version of the form.
A proposal, not yet a rule, with comments open to November 23
The September 24 filing bundles the HA-4631 proposal alongside ten other Social Security information-collection requests moving through the same Paperwork Reduction Act process, a routine administrative bundle rather than a sign that the disability-hearing change is more or less advanced than any other item on the list. Each collection in that bundle carries its own comment period and its own respondent estimate, and the agency evaluates them independently even when they are published together.
Nothing about the September 24 filing makes the combined HA-4631 the form claimants use today. It is a proposed information collection under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and Social Security is required to accept public comments before finalizing any change to a form that collects information from the public, a step still in progress with a deadline of November 23, 2026.
Until that comment period closes and Social Security acts on it, the current HA-4631 and HA-4632 remain the two forms disability-hearing claimants and their representatives use, and the agency’s notice gives no date by which the merged version would replace them even if the proposal is adopted without changes. A hearing scheduled between now and any eventual rollout would still proceed on the two-form system in place today.
What the notice does confirm is the scale of who a final decision would affect: roughly 760,420 people a year currently interact with one or both of the forms the proposal would combine, a population the agency is required to weigh against the streamlining advocates requested before any new version becomes the form claimants actually fill out. Nothing in the filing suggests the comment period itself could reopen the substantive question of what medical information a hearing office is allowed to request.
The paperwork proposal doesn’t touch benefit eligibility itself
Merging two medical-history forms into one changes how a disability-hearing claimant submits treatment and medication details, but it has no bearing on the income and resource limits that decide whether an SSI case stays open, or on how much a recipient can earn from work without losing benefits.
The SSI & Disability Action Kit lists the 2026 SSI income and resource limits alongside the rules for working without losing benefits, the two thresholds a pending hearing-form redesign does not touch no matter how the comment period ends.
Check the 2026 income and resource limits in The SSI & Disability Action Kit.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
