During the past two years DPA, along with Change and Innovation Agency (C!A), have worked to reduce and eliminate our backlog. As staffing levels and priorities change, so must the plan. Our goal is to not only provide clients their benefits in a timely manner but to also provide a structured and easily flexible work environment for all levels of field staff.
We developed a backlog plan with specific strategic steps and over the past several months we have had to enhance the plan due to staffing. This, along with our other strategies, will eliminate our backlog in 6 months. The Regional Managers met last week to fine tune the 5 pieces to this plan. The following changes started on Wednesday, September 26, 2018 and will be re-evaluated in 6 months, so these changes are temporary.
- The “overdue” team consists of an identified group of ET III’s and ET II’s. They are working old SNAP applications first, then move to the MAGI Med Cases. This team reports to Deb Robinette and she assigns a section of the statewide unacted report to them.
- The other Regional Case Reviewers (RCRs) in the field assume the review of cases for new workers as we’ve suspended the Random Statistics for 6 months. The RCRs will also work together to assist other regions that have a higher than normal number of staff in training.
- ET IV’s and EOM’s are stepping in to cover other essential ET III duties. In addition, ET III’s who had a confidential case load have transferred those cases to the Field Services Support Unit.
- Our backlog team members will continue to report to Becky. However, 4 members have been assigned to work the “almost overdue” listing--applications that are between 24-30 days--to keep them from going out of timeframes. The remainder of the team has been assigned to work in the WKFN domain as needed.
- Overtime (OT) during the week and on the weekends will be focused on working the SNAP recerts first. The assignments will come from the unacted report that C!A is sorting by benefit month for us. Your supervisor will have the information for you when you are working OT.
The field continues to receive support from Program Integrity & Analysis (PI&A) and Policy & Program Development in answering and working cases received on the Pregnant Women’s hotline and from Staff Development & Training (SD&T) who answer and work the Medical urgent hotline. SD&T will also be providing additional support in helping out our training liaisons to ensure our new workers are ready to go after CORE! Thank you all for your help.
Remember this is for 6 month and between this plan, the overtime we have been awarded, and the additional positions being added and trained, we should be out of backlog soon! Can you imagine how good that will feel?
We appreciate your flexibility as we respond to staffing and customer needs!
Sincerely,
Tammie and Aimee