Will thousands of new Medicaid enrollees inundate an already overloaded social services workforce?
Virginia’s 120 local social services departments are on the front lines when determining eligibility for benefit programs like Medicaid, and they’re trying to prepare for the wave of applicants they’ll likely see once Medicaid expansion hits the state in January.
That could be a daunting task, though, as the state’s eligibility workers are already overworked and have a low retention rate. According to the League of Social Services Executives, 40 percent of benefits eligibility specialists in local departments leave within five years.
The state has taken steps to ease the burden on those local departments, including hiring 310 additional staff members to spread the work around — but there are still some doubts of whether that’s enough.
During a Joint Subcommittee for Health and Human Resources Oversight meeting Wednesday, Elaine Burgess, president of the Virginia Benefits Program Organization who works in Virginia Beach, said most of the workers in her agency have caseloads of up to 800 cases.
Read more: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2018/09/20/will-thousands-of-new-medicaid-enrollees-inundate-an-already-overloaded-social-services-workforce/
