Record requests’ backlog trimmed

Health agency nearly caught up

A backlog of requests that caused some Arkansans to wait more than three months for birth or death certificates or other vital records should be cleared out within about two weeks, a spokesman for the state Department of Health said last week.

From a peak of about 11,000 earlier this year, the backlog of online requests for such records had been reduced to about 850 as of Thursday, spokesman Marisha DiCarlo said.

The department was also working to process 4,750 certificate requests that had been submitted through the mail, she said.

During the fiscal year that ended June 30, the Health Department’s vital records unit processed 386,615 records requests, an average of about 1,553 per state government business day.

“We are confident that we can handle the mail requests and close the gap over the next two weeks,” DiCarlo said in an email.

She said online or mailed-in records requests may still take a few weeks to process, but the department is “approaching our baseline/goal of a wait time of 5 days.”

“It’s frustrating for people to have that delay, so we’ve tried to address it quickly once we were able to recognize some of the issues,” DiCarlo said.

Although the department offers same-day processing for requests submitted in person at its offices on Markham Street in Little

Rock, DiCarlo said it began to notice a backlog this spring in requests submitted online through VitalChek, a division of New York City-based LexisNexis Group.

The VitalCheck website on Friday listed the average waiting time for Arkansas records delivered by regular mail at 75 to 90 business days, which translates to roughly 105-126 calendar days, plus another seven to 10 business days for delivery.

For express delivery, the average waiting time was listed as 60 to 75 business days, or 84 to 105 calendar days.

By contrast, the average processing time for Oklahoma was listed at seven to 10 business days for regular mail or five to 10 business days for express delivery.

DiCarlo said the backlog stemmed from an increase in records requests and in vacancies among the 14 positions for employees who process them.

At one point, five of the positions were vacant, DiCarlo said.

“They typically do have high turnover because people get those jobs, and then they move on to higher paying jobs,” she said.

To address the issue, the department received an exemption in July from a statewide hiring freeze that had required agencies to submit requests to Gov. Asa Hutchinson to fill vacant positions, DiCarlo said.

The freeze was modified Aug. 1 to allow departments to fill most vacancies without seeking approval.

The department also received approval to advertise and hire for the positions all at once instead of individually, DiCarlo said.

From March through Aug. 15, the department also paid more than $2,400 in overtime for the employees to work on Saturdays, she said.

Over the past few weeks, it has also assigned five to 10 employees from other parts of the department to spend part of their day helping with the records requests.

The department also hired Jerry Pack, who retired in 2012 as the department’s chief information officer, as a temporary employee to make recommendations on how to speed up the processing.

As a result of Pack’s recommendations, the department has made changes to its computer system, allowing employees to look up old and new records using the same computer program.

Previously, employees had to use one program for older records and another for newer ones, she said.

The department is also working on a bar code system that will allow it to more easily track the status of mail-in requests, she said.

And, she said, the department is speeding up an initiative that will allow local health units to issue birth certificates and other vital records.

The department plans to start with a dozen units around the state within the next month or two.

Eventually, it hopes to have one unit in each county that can fill the records requests.

She said the department doesn’t have information on the reason for records requests or the number of requests it receives.

Hutchinson spokesman J.R. Davis called the department a “well-managed organization” and praised the efforts by its staff to reduce the backlog.

“The governor couldn’t be more pleased with their efforts,” he said.