State health department under corrective plan for delayed SNAP applications

Federal officials have required Montana to implement a corrective action plan to improve what they call “unacceptable” delays in processing food assistance applications, a problem that the state health department has attributed to the strain that Medicaid redeterminations have created for its workforce over the last year.

In a Nov. 21 letter received by Montana Free Press through a public records request, which has not been previously reported, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service informed Montana health department officials that the state agency’s rate for timely application processing for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dropped to about 84% in the first half of 2023, more than 10 percentage points below the rate that federal officials consider acceptable.

“Montana is severely out of compliance with federal requirements related to SNAP [application processing timeliness]. This has resulted in a hardship to needy households across Montana who are not consistently receiving access to SNAP benefits within 7 or 30 days,” the letter stated.

The letter also pointed out that the state’s timeliness rate for processing applications has been declining since the latter part of 2022. From July through December of that year, the Agriculture Department wrote, Montana had a timeliness processing rate of about 92%. But between October 2022 and March of the following year, that figure dropped to just under 90%. 

The federal agency wrote that Montana’s “continued decline in timeliness is concerning,” even as the department acknowledged the difficulties imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The federal public health emergency was the original reason states were temporarily restricted from reviewing Medicaid eligibility, creating the mass redetermination process that began last spring.

“[Food and Nutrition Services] recognizes the challenges states have faced after the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic, however, low [processing] rates have a real and significant impact on eligible families who struggle to put food on the table. Timely application processing is paramount to customer service and meeting families’ nutrition needs,” the letter states.

In a letter sent to Gov. Greg Gianforte earlier this month, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack also flagged Montana for being marginally out of compliance with its rates of over- and under-payments to benefit recipients and a federally determined error rate for denying, terminating or pausing a household’s SNAP benefits. The letter noted that the state’s metrics in those categories seemed to be improving, but urged Montana to improve its processes nonetheless. Similar letters were sent to 46 other state governors.

“Timely and accurate SNAP processing is critical to meeting the nutrition needs of low-income families and protecting the integrity of SNAP. Americans in need should have access to essential benefits without unnecessary delays,” Vilsack wrote in the February letter. “People should not lose access to food because States are unable to review their applications in a timely fashion.”

The ripple effects of the Medicaid redetermination process and other pandemic-era changes to safety-net programs have been scrutinized by food policy experts in Montana and nationwide. In a November article by the national health news outlet KFF about the strain on the state’s food assistance application process, published a week after Montana received notice of the corrective plan, state health department spokesperson Jon Ebelt said SNAP applications were “being processed in a timely fashion.”

As of January, the state’s public dashboard shows that SNAP enrollment was down by more than 4,000 people compared to April 2023, the month the Medicaid redetermination process began. During that same time, the number of applications for food assistance had generally increased month over month. 

In comments to MTFP this week, Ebelt said that according to USDA, Montana is one of 20 states subject to a corrective action plan.

He also said the federal standard for SNAP processing timeliness “does not distinguish between delays caused by clients and [delays caused by] DPHHS. For example, if a client calls to complete an interview on day 30 and verifications are required, we typically allow additional time to collect verifications without denying the case.” He declined to provide an additional comment from the department about the corrective action plan.

Wren Grealey, advocacy manager with the Montana Food Bank Network, said the organization has “significant concerns” about the issues raised by federal officials in recent months. She said the nonprofit has seen an uptick in calls to its helpline during the last few months of Medicaid redetermination as people struggle with long wait times for phone calls and face-to-face meetings at state public assistance offices. 

Many Montanans who are struggling most to secure benefits, she said, are older residents and people in rural communities where services can be harder to access.

“We’re seeing a lot of older people really frustrated with the system and concerned about putting food on the table for the next month,” she said. Other families, she said, are “panicking because their SNAP didn’t come in as expected.” 

The state’s corrective action plan was due within 30 days of receipt of the November letter. A copy of that plan, also obtained by MTFP through a public records request, shows that state health department officials attributed the Medicaid redetermination process as one of the root causes of the slowdown in processing food assistance applications. 

Beginning in April, the state wrote, its agency began vetting 330,000 Medicaid renewals on a rolling basis, which required “longer than normal processing times and additional requests for contact and clarification” from Medicaid beneficiaries. Although the food assistance program can be handled separately, the department wrote, “The factors surrounding delayed [Medicaid] renewals contributed to an increased workload for eligibility staff which impacted processing time for all programs.”

The plan said training staff to handle Medicaid redeterminations took priority for much of 2023, making it harder to keep employees up to speed on applications for SNAP and other public assistance programs. Additional staff were approved to handle SNAP applications throughout December, a strategy the department said would improve processing times.

Delays in interviewing SNAP applicants stemming from busy phone lines was another factor, the department said, a problem it also linked to the surge in Medicaid callers.

“[W]e received more calls related to Medicaid cases which tied up callback slots and increased wait times making it more difficult for SNAP recipients to complete interviews early in the month,” the department wrote, adding that it has made changes to the state’s public assistance helpline and added callback slots specifically for SNAP applicants. “Callers who still wish to talk to an eligibility worker are placed back into the call queue. This allows more state workers to be available to complete SNAP interviews and call backs.”

The federal agency’s November letter did not specify how long corrective action will be required, but said it will work with the state to facilitate a steady improvement in processing times over the coming months. If the department does not improve its processing timeliness by at least 5 percentage points every six months, the letter says, federal officials may issue additional warnings for noncompliance. 

Mara Silvers is a reporter for the Montana Free Press, a Helena-based nonprofit newsroom, and can be contacted at msilvers@montanafreepress.org.