If you work in health and human services, you already know what payment error rates are, and you probably know that the stakes around them just got a lot higher. Under H.R. 1, states with SNAP payment error rates above 6 percent will be required to cover a share of benefit costs starting in FY 2028, and the administrative cost burden on counties is increasing significantly at the same time. For many agencies, this isn’t a distant policy concern, it’s a real budget problem that’s already shaping decisions being made locally now.
Most of the conversations about fixing error rates focus on audits, corrective action plans, and compliance frameworks. Those things matter. But the TipCo team thinks there’s a piece of this error rate puzzle that doesn’t get enough attention: the people doing the work.
Errors Are a Capacity Problem
Most error rates aren’t intentional. They’re not the result of careless workers or agencies that don’t care about accuracy. They’re the result of workers who are stretched too thin, who have more work to do than time to do it.
Thinking about what a typical caseworker’s day looks like, they’re managing a large caseload, navigating constant policy changes, processing applications, handling redeterminations, researching policy citations, and trying to make accurate eligibility and benefit determinations. They do all of this while also fielding incoming phone calls and answering routine questions about case status, appointment reminders, documentation requirements, and more, which interrupt their processes and constantly pull their brains in different directions.
Our belief is simple: give workers their time back, and they’ll make fewer errors.
This is a different take on the error rate problem. Instead of asking how we can catch mistakes after they happen, we believe we should be asking how to create conditions that allow workers to do their best work in the first place. That shift in perspective changes what solutions are needed to help workers accomplish, and what it looks like to make a meaningful impact.
What “Giving Time Back” Actually Means for Agencies
Giving workers time back isn’t an abstract concept. It means identifying tasks that are consuming their time and attention without requiring their expertise and handling them differently.
Incoming phone calls are one of the biggest culprits. Many of the calls that come into a county agency every day are routine; they’re the same questions with similar answers about case status, upcoming appointments, documents they need to bring, etc. For the community members calling in, their questions are important, but they often pull caseworkers away from work that requires their skilled expertise.
When routine calls are handled automatically, without pulling a worker off their already high caseload, agencies can do something meaningful with that time, giving it back to workers to focus on their complex cases and determinations without interruption. Workers can be more careful, more thorough, and more accurate to give each benefit determination the attention it deserves.
In this type of environment, where workers are given time back and agencies can bring humans back in human services, error rates improve because they have the capacity to do the work well.
How EVA Supports This
EVA, TipCo’s AI-powered human services assistant, was built with exactly this mission in mind: giving caseworkers time back.
- EVA Phone handles incoming calls to county agencies using publicly available data, answering routine questions without routing them to a caseworker. It’s available 24/7/365, responds accurately, and manages a high volume of calls that would otherwise land on already-full plates. Agencies using EVA Phone have seen it answer approximately 30 percent of their incoming calls with publicly available data, which translates directly into time returned to staff.
- EVA Companion provides personal guidance for workers across all experience levels through a user-friendly chat interface to access an agency-specific knowledge base. With EVA Companion’s help, caseworkers receive instantaneous answers to questions at their computer, eliminating the need for time-consuming research or waiting for colleague assistance, allowing them to quickly return to their caseloads.
- EVA Interview streamlines the application process for services and assistance, completes related forms, and records customer audio signatures over the phone. EVA Interview collects all of this information from community members so that caseworkers can review their applications with accurate information, eliminating time spent on the phone and, in turn, helping to reduce application error rates.
- EVA R&R recites federally mandated Rights and Responsibilities (R&Rs) and captures customer audio signatures. By taking this activity off the caseworkers’ plates, EVA R&R saved customer agencies 4,490 hours in the second half of 2025, completing 33,298 R&Rs and giving them time back to complete tasks that require the most careful attention.
EVA and her components don’t replace the judgment and expertise of caseworkers; they help to clear away the routine administrative tasks to help caseworkers have more time to focus on making accurate determinations and lower payment error rates in their county.
A Sustainable Path to Accuracy
Compliance-focused approaches to error rates, such as audits, additional oversight, and corrective actions, have their place but are largely reactive. They’re designed to respond to errors after they’ve already happened.
What TipCo focuses on is something entirely different: building solutions to help agencies create an environment where errors are less likely to happen in the first place. That means:
- Reducing the administrative burden that competes with focused, accurate casework
- Protecting workers’ attention while working through complex benefits applications and determinations
- Freeing up time so that each case and application gets the thorough review it requires
Giving workers time back is one of the most practical and cost-effective things agencies can do to help lower payment error rates today and keep them under control in the future, as each error becomes more costly.
Key Takeaways
- Most SNAP payment errors aren’t the result of careless workers; they’re the result of workers who are stretched too thin and constantly pulled away from complex eligibility work.
- Under H.R. 1, payment error rates are now a direct budget liability, making error rate reduction an urgent financial priority for states and counties.
- The most sustainable path to fewer errors isn’t more audits or oversights after the fact, it’s creating the conditions where workers have the time to focus to do their best work in the first place.
- Routine incoming calls are one of the biggest drains on caseworker time. When those are handled automatically, workers get uninterrupted time back for the determinations that matter most.
Let’s Talk
If you’re thinking about how to support your team and reduce payment errors in the current environment, we’d love to have that conversation. Reach out to the TipCo team—we’re happy to walk you through how EVA works and what it could look like for your agency.
