Social Security

Reporting and Processing of Death Information Should Be Improved Gao ID: HRD-92-88 September 4, 1992

Prompt receipt and processing of information about dead beneficiaries by the Social Security Administration (SSA) is crucial to preventing SSA overpayments. SSA's death information is also valuable to other federal agencies in preventing millions of dollars in overpayments to deceased beneficiaries. This report discusses (1) how long it takes family members, states, and others to report deaths to SSA; (2) how long it takes SSA to stop payments once a death is reported; and (3) whether delays in reporting and processing death notices prevents SSA from recovering erroneous payments from the Department of the Treasury in a timely manner. GAO also discusses ways to improve the timeliness of death information reported to SSA.

GAO found that: (1) 90 percent of the reported deaths come from family members, friends, and funeral homes; (2) most beneficiary deaths are reported within 14 days and SSA terminates benefits within 2 days; (3) telephoned, rather than mailed, reporting of death speeds benefit termination; (4) 32 percent of erroneous payments result from state and Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) reporting delays; (5) a lack of uniform state reporting requirements causes delays and erroneous payments; (6) HCFA reported 80 percent of its death reports to SSA within 2 months; (7) SSA requires an additional 2 to 3 months to process and terminate benefits after SSA receives HCFA and state death reports; (8) SSA verification of death creates delays and additional costs in obtaining death certificates; (9) less than 1 percent of shared SSA and state information is inaccurate, but 13 percent of HCFA information contains inaccuracies; (10) inadequate procedures and state information restrictions result in limited data sharing regarding non-SSA deaths; (11) delays in HCFA and state death reporting prevent SSA and the Treasury Department from initiating timely erroneous death payment recoveries; (12) Treasury and SSA have lost $5.8 million due to recovery time limitations; and (13) SSA lacks access to state automated information systems and has initiated and paid for new accessible information sharing systems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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