Social Security is taking public comments until November 23, 2026 on a proposal to fold two medical forms used in disability appeals into one. The Social Security Administration (SSA) would revise Form HA-4631, Claimant’s Recent Medical Treatment, to absorb Form HA-4632, Claimant’s Medications, so that a person who has asked for a hearing would report treatment and medication history on a single document. SSA puts the annual respondents on HA-4631 at 760,420, and nothing has been adopted: both forms stay in use while the review runs.
The proposal sits in a Federal Register notice published on September 24, 2026, one of eleven SSA paperwork collections the notice covers. SSA General Counsel Mark Steffensen signed it, and the comment window had roughly seven weeks left as of October 4.
HA-4631 absorbs HA-4632: the two forms in the merger
The two forms are separate paperwork approvals today. HA-4631 carries OMB number 0960-0292 and HA-4632 carries 0960-0289. In the notice, SSA says it is proposing to revise HA-4631 to incorporate the existing HA-4632, and that once the approval cycle is complete it will formally discontinue HA-4632. The notice is published in the Federal Register, not on ssa.gov.
What changes for a claimant is the shape of the request, not its subject matter. SSA says the revised form “will ask claimants or their representatives to submit simultaneously a list of recent medical treatments, current medications, recent physicians and healthcare providers, dates and information regarding recent visits to those providers, and any hospitalizations” since the last time the claimant gave SSA, or the state Disability Determination Services office, medical information. Under the current arrangement, the treatment list and the medication list travel on two forms. Under the proposal they would travel on one.
SSA’s own copy of HA-4631 shows the existing layout: a section completed by the hearing office, which records when the case was last brought up to date, and a section for the claimant that asks about doctors who have treated or examined the claimant since that date, what those doctors said about the condition, and any hospital stays.
760,420 respondents a year, and what the count covers
The 760,420 figure belongs to HA-4631 alone, and it counts respondents, not every disability claimant in the country. The notice defines them as claimants or representatives appealing a denial of Social Security disability (OASDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claims. The respondents are split by filing route: 518,875 on PDF, paper or uploaded documents, and 241,545 through the Electronic Records Express channel. Each responds once a year, and SSA estimates 40 minutes per response, which produces 506,947 burden hours a year.
The notice carries no separate respondent figure for HA-4632 in this entry, so the 760,420 should be read as the count for the surviving form rather than a sum across both. For scale, a different collection in the same notice, the Disability Report for adults (Form SSA-3368), is estimated at 1,745,348 respondents, because it is the form used at the start of a claim rather than at the hearing stage.
SSA’s burden table also attaches an hourly cost to each group: $23.91 for the paper and upload filers and $89.35 for the electronic filers. Those figures are part of the agency’s burden estimate, which is itself open to comment.
The hearing timetable the merged form would sit inside
HA-4631 belongs to the hearing before an administrative law judge, the step after a denial on reconsideration. SSA’s hearing process page says a hearing request must be filed within 60 days of receiving the previous determination. When the hearing is about whether the person has a disability, written evidence must reach SSA, or SSA must be told about it, no later than five business days before the hearing date.
That second deadline is why a single, complete list of recent treatment matters to the process: the medication and treatment information the combined form asks for is the kind of recent medical evidence a judge would be weighing. The notice itself does not tie the form to the five-day rule, and it does not change either deadline.
Commenting on docket SSA-2026-1090 before November 23
The route is free and open to anyone. The notice lists the regulations.gov comment page for docket SSA-2026-1090 as the online method, and also accepts mail to the SSA Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs, Attn: Reports Clearance Director, Mail Stop 3253, Altmeyer, 6401 Security Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21235, email to OR.Reports.Clearance@ssa.gov, and fax to 833-410-1631.
SSA says it is soliciting comments on the accuracy of its burden estimate, the need for the information, its practical utility, ways to improve its quality and clarity, and ways to reduce the burden on respondents, including automated collection. Those are the questions a comment on the merger can address. Because the form would stay in force unchanged unless SSA completes the revision, nothing requires a claimant to act on the notice.
The figure the comment period is built to test is SSA’s own: 760,420 respondents a year at 40 minutes each, 506,947 hours in all. Whether one combined form lowers that total or raises it is the question the notice puts to the public through November 23, 2026.
The hearing-stage medical forms under review
The Federal Register notice proposes folding the medication list on Form HA-4632 into Form HA-4631, so a claimant at the hearing stage would report treatment, medications and providers together. It leaves open what else a disability file demands once an appeal is moving, such as later reviews and changes that have to be reported, and a merged form does not answer those.
The SSI & Disability Action Kit is a 10-page kit with review and reporting steps and an income and resource organizer for keeping the rest of a disability file in order.
See the review and reporting steps in the kit →
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the Federal Register notice and Social Security Administration pages cited above.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
