SYSTEM OVERVIEW
Economic assistance programs promote well-being and provide support to achieve self-sufficiency for families, children, individuals, the elderly, and persons with disabilities by providing medical, nutritional, and financial services.
CHALLENGE
Prior to the start of the project, application processing timeliness was suffering. In January 2024, 75% of initial applications were processed within 30 days of submission, well below the target of 90%. Additionally, only 52% of benefit renewals were being processed prior to service expiration dates, well below the target of 75%. These processing delays left customers waiting too long for vital benefits and, in some cases, resulted in benefits being provided to customers who were no longer eligible. Benefit payment error rates for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reached a high of 8.4%, well above the target of 5.5%, leaving the state vulnerable to significant federal cost-sharing penalties of approximately $25 million.
IMPROVEMENT STRATEGIES
The eligibility operations team pursued strategies to improve the throughput and accuracy of eligibility workers who make benefit eligibility decisions (the system constraint), including:
- Revising staff performance measures to focus on throughput rather than task or activity completion.
- Setting up dedicated work queues based on the highest-volume application types and customer combinations, and managing individual staff workloads at a level that maximizes throughput.
- Reducing interruptions to eligibility workers making benefit determinations, including phone calls and other tasks that do not lead to eligibility decisions.
- Identifying best practices of top performers and standardizing those practices across staff through procedure revisions.
- Providing additional access to systems and information that help eligibility workers obtain the data needed to make benefit eligibility decisions.
RESULTS
The following results were achieved when comparing performance over the past 12 months (November 2024-October 2025) to the pre-project baseline (August 2023-July 2024):
- Monthly throughput of completed eligibility determinations increased from 57,594 to 66,347, a 15% increase.
- The percentage of initial applications processed within 30 days of submission improved from 77% to 87%.
- The percentage of benefit renewals processed prior to service expiration dates improved from 65% to 82%. Timely renewals ensure continuity of benefits for eligible individuals and households, and prevented an estimated $4M annually in state dollars paid on benefits for ineligible recipients.
- The SNAP benefit payment error rate improved from 8.4% in January 2024 to 5.6% in October 2025, achieving a critical benchmark. Had the error rate remained at 8.4%, the state would have faced approximately $25M in additional benefit costs due to recent federal changes.
- These improvements were achieved while also reducing state General Fund expenditures for the program by $4.8M, a 12.6% reduction.
The team is continuing to develop and implement improvement strategies to achieve its ambitious performance targets, including processing 90% of initial applications within 30 days of submission.
