AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas kicked off more than a million people from Medicaid this year without checking if they were still eligible for coverage, according to an analysis released the same day the Texas Health and Human Services Commission said its overtime push is helping to start unclog the backlog.
In November, it took an average of 120 days for an application to be touched, according to an internal email. That was cut to 43 days on Dec. 9 and 36 days as of Dec. 14, according to HHSC spokesperson Jennifer Ruffcorn.
The state agency is “taking all possible actions” and “moving aggressively to implement additional strategies” to increase staff and get Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, federal food benefit applications processed faster, she said.
In response to whistleblower employees warning that SNAP wait-times were closing in on 200 days, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said during the week of Thanksgiving that new changes at HHSC — including moving 250 staff from other projects to focus on expediting SNAP applications and giving 600 new staff Medicaid training to help process combined applications — were expected to “cut the backlog in half by the end of December” — a goal the agency now says has been met.
Source: HHSC: Time to start processing Medicaid applications trimmed amid OT push / KXAN