Latest news with #JaredNordlund
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Florida Non-profit lobbying for fix to 'failing' call center for SNAP and Medicaid applicants
A local nonprofit is trying to get the state to fix glitches with an online system that's cost people their healthcare and SNAP benefits. Channel 9 has spent more than a year digging into these problems, but the Florida Department of Children and Families has consistently blamed users for the trouble they've had uploading documents, completing required interviews, and getting benefits. However, in April, Channel 9 uncovered records showing the agency has known about problems all along. Jared Nordlund told Channel 9 he stumbled on a 9 Investigates' report on the issues his non-profit has been investigating as well. Nordlund is the Florida State Director for UnidosUS, a non-profit that serves as the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, that in part focuses on health equity. Just weeks after the new my access portal for Snap and Medicaid applicants launched, his organization conducted dozens of test calls and discovered 8 in ten calls to the state's applicant hotline would disconnect before callers got through to a live agent. 'The state will say that the website or the call center has like a 99% uptime … but the actual functionality was breaking down,' said Nordlund. Nordlund told Channel 9 UnidosUS brought their reports to state lawmakers, who budgeted over 12 million to improve the call center last year. According to Nordlund, UnidosUS made 348 new test calls to the Medicaid line between September and February 2025. The non-profit found the disconnect rate dropped from 80 percent to just five percent for English speakers. However, according to their report, 45% of the Spanish language calls were still disconnected before reaching an agent, which is approximately nine times the rate for English speakers. According to the non-profit, 'These failures disproportionately impact low-income, rural and immigrant communities, where internet access is limited.' UnidosUS is now lobbying for additional money in this year's budget to fix the call center for Spanish language speakers. They are also advocating for fixes to the online glitches. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
DCF call center wait time nears an hour for Spanish speakers, report finds
Hispanic civil rights group UnidosUS released a study showing Spanish speakers have to wait 40 minutes longer on average to get assistance from the Florida Department of Children and Families call center than those who speak English. (iStock / Getty Images Plus) People needing assistance in Spanish from the Florida Department of Children and Families wait on hold for nearly an hour, according to a report from the Hispanic civil rights group UnidosUS. The wait time for the call center, which fields questions about government cash and food assistance programs and Medicaid, has improved since the group started monitoring its efficacy in the summer of 2023. Still, UnidosUS found that Spanish speakers deal with an average wait time of 54 minutes, whereas the wait averages 13 minutes for English speakers. Thursday's report is the third the group has published about the wait times, starting as the state began disenrolling millions from Medicaid following the end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency. While the wait time for Spanish speakers has gone down from 120 minutes in 2023 to 56 minutes, 45% of the calls the group made got dropped before reaching a live agent. Between September and February, UnidosUS made 174 calls to the English and Spanish lines at various times of the day. By comparison, only 5% of the calls seeking assistance in English were disconnected, according to the report. The wait time for English speakers went down from 34 minutes in 2023 to 13 minutes between September and February. DCF's call center wait times have drawn scrutiny, with Floridians facing the second-longest wait time in the country last year. Concerns from lawmakers led to an investment of $12 million into improving the call center at the time. Jared Nordlund, UnidosUS' Florida director, said the group is advocating for DCF to hire more bilingual call center agents. 'Clearly, the money we advocated for last session to beef up call centers worked,' Nordlund said in a phone interview with Florida Phoenix. 'This has worked really well for English speakers, so clearly there needs to be more work done to help Spanish speakers.' Additionally, testimony during a federal trial in Jacksonville last year revealed the department had blocked 54% of phone calls from people wanting to reach one of its call center agents that April. Inefficiencies within the call center played a key role in the class action filed by Medicaid patients alleging Florida violated their constitutional right to due process when it took away their health care coverage without proper notice. Plaintiffs argued during the trial that call center agents gave them wrong information about their Medicaid eligibility. At the time, the director of the call center testified that DCF planned to hire hundreds more people to handle the calls. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
