{"id":251235,"date":"2022-06-14T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/?p=251235"},"modified":"2023-05-02T13:39:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T20:39:31","slug":"edd-disability-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/_zh\/economy\/2022\/06\/edd-disability-calls\/","title":{"rendered":"Calls overwhelm disability benefits call centers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u603b\u4e4b<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

Calls to California\u2019s Employment Development Department disability insurance call centers surged to 12 times their normal volume in late 2021 and early 2022 as the department dealt with fraud. Many went unanswered, leaving some Californians in the lurch for months. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n

\u9605\u8bfb\u8fd9\u7bc7\u6587\u7ae0 <\/em>espa\u00f1ol.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christina Cedillo has a sticky note on her computer, reminding her what buttons to press when she calls California\u2019s employment department with questions about disability benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at this point, she doesn\u2019t need it. After calling hundreds of times, she can recite the whole phone tree from memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cedillo, who works as a bartender, gave birth to a girl in October 2021 and immediately filed for disability benefits, which cover pregnancy. By mid-December, though, the payments stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She couldn\u2019t find anything on the department\u2019s website that explained why, so she started calling. The worker she reached said many payments had been delayed due to fraud, but that they should restart soon, Cedillo recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they didn\u2019t, Cedillo estimates that she called the department between 300 to 500 times in late 2021 and early 2022. She would sit and redial, often while nursing, sometimes 40 times in one day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t alone. Less than half of unique phone numbers calling the Employment Development Department\u2019s disability insurance branch call centers were answered on average between November 2021 and April 2022, according to department data. That\u2019s down from about 80% between May and October of 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without wages coming in, Cedillo put more charges on her credit card. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had budgeted for this and I knew that I was going to not get very much from the state anyways,\u201d said Cedillo. \u201cAnd then to not even have that \u2014 and I was depending on that \u2014 was really, really frustrating.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, Cedillo got a letter from the department asking her to fill out a form and send back documents to verify her identity. She sent the form and documents the next day, she said. Weeks went by. In April, she got another payment. She thinks she\u2019s still owed $168, but, she said in a June interview, \u201cnow I feel like I\u2019ve just given up.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employment department flooded with calls<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The deluge of calls began in late 2021. In December, the department said<\/a> it was taking action to halt \u201csuspected organized criminal elements filing false disability insurance claims.\u201d California\u2019s disability insurance replaces some wages for people who are unable to work due to illness, injury, or pregnancy, and medical providers certify the existence of a disability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agency had experienced a massive surge of new medical provider accounts and suspected many were fraudulent, said department spokesperson Gareth Lacy in an interview with CalMatters. Typically, the department received 70 new medical provider registrations per week, but during four weeks from late November to early December, they received about  30,000, Lacy wrote in an email. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sift through the influx of claims, verify medical provider and claimants’ identities, and answer an uptick in calls, the roughly 1,000 staff in the disability branch worked 22,000 hours of overtime per month from December 2021 to May 2022. That\u2019s ten times the normal monthly overtime average, according to Lacy. The disability branch also borrowed 133 employees from other branches of the department, and brought back nine retired employees to help with the additional work, according to Lacy. To confirm the identities of claimants and doctors, staff sent out emails and letters, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January, the department said<\/a> it had suspended approximately \u201c27,000 suspicious medical provider registrants and 345,000 claims associated with those providers or other suspicious activity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the number of calls to the disability insurance branch call centers, which also handle paid family leave, was swelling. In January 2022 alone, the call centers received about 5.7 million calls, after receiving an average of about 443,000 per month for May through October of 2021, according to data the department provided to CalMatters. The vast majority of those calls, Lacy said, were regarding disability benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n