A 59 years young successful nurse practitioner who had worked for many years at Northwell Health, the largest health care provider in New York State, was referred to Jason Newfield by a past client. She had suffered a brain injury in January 2024 and was worried that her long-term disability claim would be challenged by Hartford. A friend told her Jason would be perfectly suited to guide her through the process and had every confidence in the claim’s success with Jason’s help. Clients often refer Jason to their friends and colleagues, and there is no better complement when this happens.
The woman was right to be concerned. She suffered from physical and cognitive challenges, which changed her life and ended her long career. She had a group LTD policy with Hartford and knew she needed help.
We first secured cognitive testing for our client, which revealed an array of deficits which prevented her from safely and effectively treating patients. The testing included validity testing, tests of verbal comprehension, sustained attention and vigilance, reaction speed, impulse control, processing speed, response inhibition, executive functioning, fine motor coordination and speed, visual memory, and auditory discrimination, among other tests.
As a nurse practitioner, she had to have capacities across numerous specific cognitive domains, including speed of processing in a hospital setting, with lives at stake, attention and working memory regarding patient information and nuances of patient care, learning and memory to treat patients, strong executive functioning to multi-task between patients and overall high levels of intellectual functioning.
Having represented many claimants where cognitive testing was required to support a claim, we reached out to one of our top cognitive test sources. Her cognitive testing provided objective data to support significant impairments in her abilities, with significant deficits in such abilities including speed of processing information, attention and concentration, expressive language, memory, and fine motor skills. Her performance on measures of executive functions varied according to the nature of the task, with reasoning abilities being relative strengths but tasks requiring rapid processing of information showing severe weaknesses.
Collectively, this powerful data – supported by validity testing – was submitted, along with significant collateral evidence to buttress the objectively verified data, and which allowed Hartford to appreciate the severity of her symptoms and resulting impairments. She could not have safely practiced as a nurse practitioner without putting patients at risk, and the claim we presented made this clear. Hartford approved her claim and she was able to shift her focus to living within her new limitations.