Roger J. Bisson’s wife waited on hold with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services one day last month for two hours before she heard the telltale “click.”

“They hung up on us,” said Bisson of Topsham, whose severely disabled adult daughter was nearly cut from MaineCare last month because DHHS couldn’t find her renewal paperwork. “It’s so frustrating because nobody wants to talk to you.”

The Bissons aren’t alone. Backlogs and delays at DHHS have caused some Mainers to temporarily lose their benefits and have frustrated others who have waited for hours on the phone or in person without getting help.

DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew on Tuesday acknowledged the problems and said they’ve been caused by changes the department is making in an effort to modernize and become more efficient, including changing job responsibilities, scanning client paperwork so it’s available to all workers in the computer system, sorting all mail at one location and funneling questions through a central call center rather than individual caseworkers.

Mayhew said DHHS is working to fix the problems that have popped up and the department will be more efficient when the changes are complete, some of them likely next year.

“This is a significant transformation of our operation, and like any organization this takes time to implement,” she said.

DHHS started making changes earlier this summer. Advocacy groups and DHHS clients believe that’s when the problems began.

Complaints come from people dealing with various DHHS programs, though most center around MaineCare and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

Some people, such as the Bissons, said they waited on hold for hours only to be suddenly disconnected or told they couldn’t be helped because the department hadn’t scanned in their paperwork yet. Others said they waited at their local DHHS office for hours, then were told to go home without being seen or left on their own because the wait was too long.

Thomas Case of Lewiston waited for help in a crowded Lewiston DHHS office earlier this week. His elderly wife was sick and had just been admitted to a residential rehab facility, but Medicare wouldn’t cover the $10,000-a-month bill. He wanted to know if MaineCare would.

Case waited for an hour, then learned it would be two to four hours before someone could see him. He left.

“I can’t wait anymore,” Case said. “This is so discouraging.”

Other DHHS clients complain that their paperwork has been lost, misplaced or neglected when it should have been scanned into the computer system.

“I don’t know what they are doing with these forms,” said Jim Devine of Portland, whose SNAP benefit was nearly cut off because his renewal paperwork disappeared. “It seems like they’ve got a mess down there.”

Devine was able to keep his benefits after the department located his paperwork. Others, however, have been dropped from SNAP, even when their paperwork was in order, because DHHS workers didn’t schedule their required annual interview in time.

“I’ve been told by the DHHS employees there’s been a backlog on doing the phone interviews,” said Erica Veazey, a Bangor-area staff attorney for Pine Tree Legal Assistance. “Then the person loses their benefits in the meantime while they’re waiting to get their interview done.”

Three of Veazey’s clients were dropped from SNAP this summer because DHHS couldn’t get their annual interview done by deadline. It took up to two weeks to get the benefit back.

“I had one client who was going to a food bank while he was trying to get this sorted out,” she said.

Veazey and other advocates say the department’s long-term goal is laudable. They agree with Mayhew that DHHS needs to be modernized, and they believe the changes could ultimately help people. But they worry about the problems Mainers are encountering in the meantime. 

“The idea is certainly a good one. But it doesn’t seem like there’s the manpower yet to implement it in a way that is effective. And that’s what’s frustrating to clients, but also I’m finding a lot of clients are frightened,” Veazey said. “(They say) ‘I can’t sit on hold for 45 minutes. I don’t have enough minutes on my phone.’ ‘I don’t know why my food stamps were terminated. The benefits aren’t on my card. I thought I sent in the paperwork; I don’t know what’s happening.’ A lot of fear is what I’m hearing from people.”

Advocates also worry that the department’s new initiatives — such as adding photos to benefit cards and requiring childless adults to work in order to get food stamps — will only add more work to an already overwhelmed staff.

Mayhew acknowledged that DHHS is struggling to hire and retain workers. Its Office of Family Independence alone has 887 workers and 97 vacancies. It is in the middle of hiring 45 people.

In addition, she said, staff time has been taken up sorting through more than 3,600 applications to the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace and determining whether those applicants are instead eligible for MaineCare, the state version of Medicaid. 

“So much of the time spent with those applications has exacerbated some of the other challenges, like the backlog around our food stamp recertifications,” Mayhew said.

She said the department is working on increasing staffing and is looking to address turnover. It is also looking at ways to implement new initiatives without greatly impacting DHHS staff, such as partnering with the Maine Department of Labor to help with a food stamps work requirement.

Mayhew said the department is also addressing problems at its new call center. At one point the average wait time was 22 minutes. It’s now down to 8 minutes, and the department wants it down more.

“There were delays and there were dropped calls and there continues to be, but we’ve made significant improvement,” she said.

Mayhew believes the problems can be resolved and the changes will be worth it in the long run.

“All of this … is truly focused on improving the system, supporting our staff to truly be a client-centric, customer-focused operation,” she said.

Meyhew said Mainers who are having problems with DHHS should contact the department’s Constituent Services Desk at 287-5846.

“We certainly will try to expedite their situation,” she said.

ltice@sunjournal.com