HHSC policy change will help rebuild state's capacity
WILL ROGERS Rusk

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission will convert most temporary workers in its community-based eligibility office to permanent status and increase staffing in these offices to the level authorized by the Legislature.

Workers in communitybased eligibility offices help people apply for health and human service benefits such as food stamps, Medicaid, and public assistance.

The Texas State Employees Union believes this is an important step toward rebuilding the state's capacity to deliver health and human service benefits.

After HHSC announced in 2004 that it would privatize eligibility services by the end of 2006, more than 2,000 eligibility workers quit, leaving local offices short-staffed.

HHSC briefly used privatized call centers to provide eligibility services in some areas of the state, but when the call centers made access to benefits more difficult, the agency ended the experiment and returned most of the work being done in call centers to its community-based offices.

Staffing in local offices had declined by about 25 percent since 2004, and fewer staff had to work the backlog of 20,000 applications caused by the call centers and keep up with a growing number of new applications for benefits.

The dearth of experienced eligibility workers made it difficult to work the backlog and keep up with new applications. As a result, Texas faces the possibility of incurring federal sanctions because too many applications are not being processed.

"Before the call center experiment, the federal government awarded Texas $142 million in enhanced funding for processing food stamp applications accurately and timely," said Gross. "Now, we face federal sanctions."

Mr.. Rogers is a spokesman for the Texas State Employees Union.