Disability advocates are urging state officials to immediately address the Department of Social Services’ call centers, which they say have been chronically understaffed for years. Sheldon Toubman, attorney for Disability Rights Connecticut (DRC) said current staffing levels are already insufficient, and that cuts to SNAP and Medicaid will only exacerbate the problems.
“The SNAP cuts are actually starting now in November, and I’m not even talking about because of the shutdown, even if there weren’t a shutdown the cuts would be happening,” said Toubman. “So a lot of those people, what are they going to do? They freak out, they call and then the numbers are going to go up.”
Toubman said that DSS has had issues with call center staffing “since the beginning of time,” but that the problem will worsen immeasurably given the expected spike in call volume as thousands of people lose their HUSKY coverage or see their premiums rise, and as a result of several OBBA stipulations, such as the requirement that Medicaid determinations be done twice a year, or the addition of work requirements for a large population of SNAP recipients.
“It’s basically chronic,” said Toubman of the call center’s staffing issues. “It’s been a chronic problem, and that’s why the main thrust of what we’re doing in the letter now is saying we can’t do this anymore.”
DRC and 24 other disability advocate and legal aid groups have now sent two letters to state lawmakers and officials at DSS and the Office of Policy and Management (OPM), one on Sept. 11 and another just yesterday, demanding urgent attention be paid to call-center staffing shortages during the special session expected next month.
“The special session must include addressing the long-standing dysfunction and poor performance of the call center run by the Department of Social Services, by mandating the immediate hiring of new staff, under newly adopted requirements for timely performance,” read the September letter.
Per stats on DSS’s official dashboard, the average wait time for Tier 1, or low-complexity calls, last month was 42 minutes, with 47% of calls being abandoned, or dropped. While this represents a six minute decrease in average wait time from July, Toubman said it is a far cry from the average call-center standard of 67 seconds, or health center standard of 50 seconds. In an Oct. 10 meeting of the Medical Assistance Program Oversight Council (MAPOC), Toubman said a DSS official announced their average wait-time goal moving forward will be fifteen minutes, which he said is “not even remotely OK.”
DSS officials announced at that meeting that they will be hiring 30 new call center staff, but Toubman doesn’t think these hires will sufficiently outpace the agency’s rate of turnover, as it takes several months to train them for the job.
For years, Toubman said, the state has followed a pattern of, “attention called [to the call center shortage], media pays attention, department under pressure, department gets permission from OPM to hire.”
At the MAPOC meeting, Easha Canada, the Deputy Commissioner and Chief Strategy Officer for DSS, fielded questions from Senators Matt Lesser (D-Cromwell) and Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) regarding the measures and resources DSS has in place to prepare for the expected surge in calls. Canada said the department will use new technology to help smooth out workflow associated with the income verification of gig workers as well as other challenges brought by HR 1.
“There’s a lot of technology in the marketplace that’s looking to help with the strained capacity that states will be experiencing while implementing HR 1,” said Canada.
Canada noted that the 30 new hires will be a “combination” of full-time workers and subcontracted workers for its call staff. She also noted that the state will receive some federal funding matches to implement HR1 related adjustments.
“We’re using a combination of staff that we’ve worked with before with our vendor, and staff that we’ll be bringing on, that will give us the complement we believe that we need right now,” said Canada. “Then we can reassess, and then have the conversation again with our partners to see what additional needs might need to be met.”
One solution to the turnover problem proposed by Toubman is that DSS return to a case-worker system, in which DSS clients are matched with their own personal employee to call. Toubman said that allowing employees to have a “real human connection” with their clients would reduce burnout. He said that the call times could also be reduced by having DSS require the same call-time standards that it requires of its subcontractors.
“The most important fix is the adoption of a basic reasonable statutory standard for what is timely performance, such as matching what DSS contractually imposes on all of its own contractors which run call centers, and a statutory mandate to maintain sufficient staffing to meet this standard on a regular basis,” read the Oct. 23 letter.
The letter included wait-time standards DSS has set for three of the companies it has subcontracted for call centers related to other services, CHNCT, Benecare and Carelon. CHNCT is expected to answer 90% of calls within 60 seconds, Benecare is expected to answer 90% within 45 seconds, and Carelon is expected to answer 90% within 30 seconds. Yesterday’s letter also noted that the last time DSS was able to reach a 15 minute average wait time, 25% of calls still ended up being abandoned per DSS’s own statistics.
When asked about the possibility of subcontracting all of DSS’s call-center work to efficient subcontractors, Toubman said he was “agnostic” to the proposal.
“Personally, and I can’t speak for others, but I’m agnostic about it, if it could work,” said Toubman. “The problem is that it is complicated, meaning the benefits are complicated, and you need people who are really trained.”
A statement provided by Christine Stuart, Deputy Director of Communications for DSS, said that DSS’s implementation of “more self-service options,” such as a chatbot and new Interactive Voice Response system, which is expected to come online in mid-November roll out, “are anticipated to have a positive impact on call wait times.”
“DSS has been working with our partners at the Office of Policy and Management to make sure we have the resources to provide services to our residents,” read the statement. “We have been able to identify resources to fund additional help for our call centers and, as a result, further resources are not needed at this time.”
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