Raimondo extends hours at DHS field office

Governor Gina Raimondo has extended hours at the Providence DHS field office amid problems remaining a little more than a month after the launch of the state’s new benefits system UHIP.

"It’s not right that a mom would have to wait 2, 3 hours maybe with her kids in order to get services,” said Raimondo.

Beginning Tuesday hours will be extended twice a week to 6:30pm.

The Governor is also bringing in more managers from Deloitte, the company hired to build the system, to help supervise the technical staff.

"It’s frustrating for everyone. No one wants to see people waiting in line for an hour. We are going to do better.  We are going to do better because people deserve better and we are going to fix it,” said Raimondo.

Documents obtained by ABC 6 News on Friday show just how much wait times have increased since the system launched. For example, call waits on September 10th were an average of 14 minutes compared to an hour and 12 minutes on October 8th.

The roll-out has received a fair amount of backlash from legislators. Last week House Speaker Nick Mattiello and Oversight Chairwoman Patricia Serpa announced an out of session joint hearing. That hearing between the House Oversight and Finance Committees is scheduled for this Thursday. One of the final straws leading lawmakers to call the hearing was news that a federal agency had warned against launch saying the system wasn’t ready.

As it stands now, the Governor is emphasizing that the majority of the hundreds of thousands of people who use the system are not experiencing problems. But, she says the issues do need to be fixed for those who are running into them.

"We are going to continue to monitor it and continue to do better,” said Raimondo.

The extended hours will continue until further notice.

(C) WLNE 2016