Fitness Tracker

Using Fitness Trackers to Objectify the Severity of Sleep Disorders and Severe Fatigue

Attorney Jonathan T. Macedo finds innovative ways to assist his clients with their short-term or long-term disability claims.

Some of the most difficult types of short and long-term disability claims involve cases that involve subjective complaints. Subjective complaints

Recently, Jonathan assisted a Registered Nurse who worked at one of the local hospitals in Boston who was struggling with severe fatigue caused to narcolepsy and extremely poor sleep. Her sleep was so severe that she was falling asleep while at work and felt she was a danger to her patients.

After filing her claim, the insurance company denied long term disability benefits on the basis that she failed to objectify the severity of her fatigue. Additionally, the insurer disputed the existence of a sleep disorder as her attending physicians could not confirm a diagnosis of narcolepsy because she could not complete Multiple Sleep Latency Testing or a Polysomnogram as she was not sleeping enough to undergo and complete the testing.

To address the insurance company’s concerns that the severity of her sleep disorder was not objectifiable, Attorney Macedo worked with his client and her physicians to come up with a novel way to demonstrate the severity of her sleep disorder to submit with her appeal.

Using a fitness tracker to track her sleep cycle, the data clearly established that our client slept an average of roughly 4-5 hours per day. Furthermore, Attorney Macedo submitted text messages the client had with friends and coworkers demonstrating she had fallen asleep on multiple occasions while texting friends.

Even though her physicians could not conclusively confirm the existence of narcolepsy or any other sleep disorder as they could not perform the testing due to her poor sleep, the fitness tracker objectified the severity of her symptoms and conclusively demonstrated that she was entitled to long-term disability benefits as she could no longer safely perform her occupational duties as a Registered Nurse for one of Boston’s larger hospitals.

While every case is different, having an experienced long term disability attorney advocating on your behalf who has experience with creative ways to objectify your disability can be crucial to successfully pursue an ERISA governed long-term disability claim and appealing a claim that has been denied or terminated.

The attorneys are Murray Law Office are waiting and happy to assist or answer any questions you may have regarding your claim for long-term disability benefits.