In September, Lynne Kincaid retired as a Ramsey County employee, where she helped process medical assistance — or Medicaid — claims for many years.

Medicaid helps people who are either elderly, low-income, or disabled afford health care insurance.

RELATED: Ramsey County seeing significant backlog on Medicaid renewals

In late October, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS first reported there was a backlog of processing Medicaid applications and renewals.

At that time, a Ramsey County spokesperson said there were approximately 500 people waiting more than 60 days to have their Medicaid applications and renewals processed.

Kincaid told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that she believes the number of people caught up in the backlog is “worse than that.”

“The problem is they don’t have enough workers to process these cases,” said Kincaid. “It’s unacceptable.”

Unacceptable, Kincaid said, because delays in application processing mean that patients cannot get prescriptions renewed and, often, doctor’s appointments have to be canceled.

In October, Susan Hill, a registered nurse, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that she has five patients who’ve been caught up in the backlog. Hill said they had to cancel visits to their physicians and some have not had their medications renewed either.

“It’s the worst I have seen in 25 years,” said Hill.

A Ramsey County spokesperson said there has been a post-pandemic surge in applications, and staffing has been low. The county spokesperson said they were hiring part-time employees from other counties and other workers are putting in overtime to try and get caught up and ease the backlog.