Social Security has an obligation to provide benefits quickly to applicants whose medical conditions are so serious that their conditions obviously meet disability standards.

Compassionate allowances are a way of quickly identifying diseases and other medical conditions that invariably qualify under the Listing of Impairments based on minimal objective medical information. Compassionate allowances will allow Social Security to quickly target the most obviously disabled individuals for allowances based on objective medical information that we can obtain quickly.

Commissioner Astrue has held two Compassionate Allowance public outreach hearings. The first was on rare diseases and the second was on cancers. A third hearing on brain injuries was held on November 18, 2008.

The initial list of Compassionate Allowance conditions was developed as a result of information received at public outreach hearings, public comment on an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, comments received from the Social Security and Disability Determination Service communities, and the counsel of medical and scientific experts. Also, we considered which conditions are most likely to meet our current definition of disability.

A modest 50 conditions have been selected for the initiative's rollout.

Read More at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/compassionateallowances/