INDIANAPOLIS – Ten counties in southern Indiana will serve as a pilot for a new hybrid welfare delivery system that will start sometime in January, the Family and Social Services Administration announced Sunday.
But Allen County and other areas affected by the failed modernization effort will have to wait for improvements.
“We are shooting for performance – not a specific timeline,” said Marcus Barlow, spokesman for the state agency.
In 2006, Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration inked a 10-year contract with IBM to process Medicaid, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families applications. The changes eliminated individual caseworkers, shifting to a system that relied on telephone calls and the Internet. But after rolling out the program in many areas, the state faced continued complaints about error rates and backlogs in getting food stamps, Medicaid certification and welfare benefits.
In October, Daniels announced he was canceling the remainder of IBM Corp’s $1.3 billion contract.
The state has since been working on creating a hybrid system that will combine successful elements of the old welfare delivery system and the modernized system, including more face-to-face time with clients.
The hybrid system will roll out in Daviess, Dubois, Gibson, Knox, Perry, Pike, Posey, Spencer, Vanderburgh and Warrick counties.
“We’re real encouraged. They definitely sought outside advice from advocates,” said Kim Dodson, the ARC of Indiana’s associate executive director. “They took the concerns to heart, and agree we need a more accountable transparent system. They want to be accountable. They want to be the decision-makers.”
Dodson did note, though, that FSSA needs to set specific benchmarks to gauge the success of the program.
Barlow said the only benchmark that has been set is to improve timeliness and error rates to match federal standards.
“We will continue to push them on that,” Dodson said. “They need public benchmarks to be able to show their expectations and improvement. Otherwise, how will they know if the pilot has been successful enough to roll out to other areas?”
Paul Chase, AARP public policy state director, is hopeful that improvements will occur, but he is also concerned about having some counties on the hybrid system, some on the modernized system and some still on the old legacy system.
“Operating three platforms at the same time will be somewhat of an administrative nightmare,” he said. “It’s been complicated enough with two.”
He also feels empathy for the areas of the state that will be stuck in the failed system for an unknown length of time.
“They are hedging their bets on a timeline to work out the kinks, but the problems have been going on now for over two years, so we need to get these things fixed as soon as possible because people are really suffering trying to get services,” Chase said.
Barlow said the county office staff in the pilot region will be increased – moving 20 state and contract workers from a service center to the local offices.
In addition, a new deputy regional manager position will be created and three to four supervisors will be added in the region – all state employees.
But Barlow said all the changes will be made within the agency’s current budget.
The pilot system will have a team concept, with a group of state and contract workers formed into teams working on a pool of cases in their counties. All the people working on a case will work in the applicant’s county office.
The state is keeping a two-tiered system of having contract employees processing applications with state employees making final determinations. This is to deter fraud.
Those in need of services can choose one of several ways to access the system – by phone, in person or by Internet. For instance, if a person calls in, that call will be routed to a county office, depending on the person’s ZIP code.
And people in the offices will scan and attach documentation to a person’s file immediately when the documentation is received, which Barlow said, he hopes will help deter the problem of missing and lost documentation.
Dodson said she and other advocate groups are pushing for a receipt or confirmation to be given to the person who brings in the documentation to show that all the information was received and applicants did what they were supposed to do.
“It was inexcusable for so many documents to get lost” in the modernized system, she said.
Of the 22 subcontractors, Barlow was unsure how many would retain their duties because many contracts are being renegotiated.
He did say Affiliated Computer Services Inc. and Arbor will continue to provide most of the contract staff.
And Crowe Horwath will no longer staff the V-Can Network, also known as voluntary community assistance network.
Instead, he said the regional managers and deputy managers will handle outreach and constituent resolution.
And Barlow said no contracts would be as long as 10 years, as in the previous system. Although some legislators have expressed concern about retaining Affiliated Computer Services, Barlow said employees of the company are not the problem – it was the flawed system they were asked to implement.
The call centers that were handling most of the processing will shift to “change centers” in which changes can be made to update a person’s file.
Those centers will also conduct Medicaid redeterminations, recover overpaid benefits and process federal reports on food stamps.
