ACCESS NE "Heading in the wrong direction"
Mary Angus
Editorial, 8/8: Heading in wrong direction
For the past five years, the national error rate for the food stamp program has been going in the right direction -- down.
In Nebraska, the error rate is going up.
That’s going to cost the state some cash. For the first time in nearly a decade, Nebraska failed this year to win a federal bonus award for its accuracy in providing benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Blame poor implementation of ACCESSNebraska, the call center system the state Department of Health and Human Services began to roll out in 2010.
Last year, Nebraska qualified for a bonus of $363,960. The highest bonus was more than $1 million in 2006.
The switch to the new system has been plagued by problems from the beginning. At various forums, Nebraskans complained that they could never talk to the same worker twice, that forms they sent to the state were lost and that they often had to wait on hold for long periods of time. When they finally did get to talk to a live person, they still couldn’t get answers.
The problems were so pervasive that state senators decided this spring they needed to intervene in order to get the program back on track. A bill introduced by Sen. Annette Dubas requires the state to staff offices across the state where Nebraskans could go in person to discuss their case.
At the public hearing on her bill, which passed overwhelmingly, Dubas told of a case in which a 92-year-old woman had used almost all of her $65,000 nest egg for home health care. When she applied for assistance with the help of her daughter, her case turned into a fiasco of repeat phone calls and mistakes. The family sent in forms. Workers said they couldn’t find them. The request dragged out for months.
The federal government supports the use of call centers by states, as well as online applications, as a way of gaining efficiency. But it also notes that states should be “mindful of the potential impact of any new process on errors and application processing timeliness.”
With the opening of the fourth call center in Lexington this spring, state officials say the amount of time a caller has to wait on hold has dropped.
But that’s hardly the only standard by which the performance of ACCESSNebraska should be judged. The decline in the food stamp error rate is another troubling indication the transition to the call center system was poorly handled.
Some Nebraskans have started calling the new system “no access.” We hope that when and if the improvements required by the Legislature are fully implemented, ACCESSNebraska finally will start living up to its name.