P&P August 2016

National Accuracy Clearinghouse Helps States Save Millions by Fighting Dual Participation

By Reshma Khatkhate and Chris Larson H Hurricane Katrina obliterated coastal towns, took hundreds of lives, and displaced more than 400,000 1 people throughout Southern Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. For example, in Mississippi alone, more than one million individuals were impacted by the storm with more than one in six citizens seeking assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But long after short-term assistance ended and the FEMA trucks left, the massive diaspora of people from around the Gulf Coast continues to affect health and human service (HHS) programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Disaster-SNAP (D-SNAP). Unfortunately, it is inevitable that govern- ment assistance fraud will follow natural disasters. Moreover, the post-storm chaos and displacement from Katrina provided perfect conditions for some bad actors to cross state lines to enroll in multiple SNAP and D-SNAP programs. Both taxpayers and disadvantaged needy state residents who rely on the aid suffer the most when fraud and false claims drain the system. In Mississippi, residents are in favor of helping struggling families put much needed food on the table, but they also want to be assured that their taxpayer dollars are spent

efficiently and only going to those who are truly in need. That is why the Mississippi joined forces with four neighboring states who were also profoundly affected by Katrina—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana—to create the National Accuracy Clearinghouse (NAC), a multistate data exchange designed to assist states with the challenge of identifying and preventing the duplicate issuance of benefits to recipients and to eliminate improper payments within SNAP and D-SNAP. Dual or duplicate participation occurs when a person, inadver- tently or intentionally, applies in more than one state during the same calendar month for gov- ernment benefits. The NAC’s success has been remarkable. Since the pilot launch in 2014, the states of Mississippi and Alabama both realized an 80 percent decrease in dual participation for the 12-month pilot period. The NAC’s preventive cost savings for all five states was $5.6 million. That is just five states for one program. Just imagine the impact if the NAC model were adopted nation- wide not only for SNAP, but for Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and other HHS programs. “The success of NAC to date has been overwhelming, and when implemented nationwide is estimated to save millions,”

Photo illustration by Chris Campbell

August 2016 Policy&Practice 23