Westchester County Speeds Processing and Eliminates Paper Files

Westchester County provides a wide range of services to the nearly 1 million people who live, work and play in the suburban county just north of New York City. Things happen, and when they do, the Office of Risk Management often gets involved.

The county is self-insured for auto, general and professional liabilities, and manages claims and subrogation for 40 departments. The county manages about 300 claims a year across a wide range of facilities including a jail, amusement park, community college, public transportation and a fleet of county vehicles.

As the county’s exposure grew and legal matters became more complex, so did management of documentation in all its myriad forms. In addition to being cumbersome, paper files had to be trucked off to a central warehouse. Under the county’s Going Green program, county departments were encouraged to find way to reduce paper — or face rationing measures to meet reduction goals.

A Single Source for Multimedia Documents

A longtime user of CSC’s RISKMASTER software, Westchester County Risk Management Analyst Mary Fasano learned about Media Content Management, a fully Web-based digital imaging system that is an optional component from CSC. She recognized that Media Content Management could help support the county’s paper reduction as well as give the county staff 24x7 access to notices of loss, medical bills, police reports, videos and other elements of the claims process.

Documents and media such as photos and videos can be added by importing existing files, using templates, or scanning and entering through a Web URL. Electronic files can be accessed in RISKMASTER simply by clicking on the paper clip icon in any associated event, claim, user or policy. Folders and subfolders can be manually or automatically created, indexed or reindexed, and searches can be made using full or partial information.

“It has enabled us to move all of our documents for any case to one location,” Fasano said. “In fact, we rarely have to handle a paper file anymore. It’s also much easier for us to share information since it’s all done electronically.”

Supporting Subrogation, Green IT

The system, for example, stores copies of authorization forms for county vehicles as well as state motor vehicle licenses for the drivers. “If there is an accident and it then becomes a claim, we can now easily store, access and attach all the documentation for our attorneys and outside counsel — all the way from the driver authorization to the police report to photos of the accident,” Fasano said.

Photos and other reports in the system are also used to file claims with various insurance carriers to support the department’s subrogation program. Each year, the county brings in about $400,000 in subrogated claims arising from damage to signs, guardrails, overpasses and other county property caused by members of the general public. “The money we collect goes to the Department of Public Works and helps pay for the repair program,” Fasano said.

And one of the key justifications the Office of Risk Management used to license the software — reducing paper — appears to be paying off. Based on an average of 20 documents per incident, the department diverts about 6,000 paper documents annually from the county’s filing cabinets. “We may get to the point where we don’t have to store paper anymore at all, which ties in nicely with Westchester County’s plan to go green,” Fasano said. “But the real benefit to our jobs is having everything at your fingertips and not having to go search for a paper file.”

Building on a Long-Term Relationship

Westchester County’s relationship with CSC’s software dates back to shortly after 1986, when the county first decided to self-insure liability risks. The county started out with the DOS-based version of RISKMASTER and has upgraded along with the product to the Web-based version, RISKMASTER X, and its Business Intelligence reporting tool.

In addition to providing quarterly reports on claims, the department is able to provide specialized reports to help mitigate future losses. “When we’ve seen an increase in the number of incidents in a particular location such as our amusement park, we were able to go back and look at the type of incidents and other factors that could have contributed to the claim,” Fasano said. “We can then provide that information to the departments to help them prevent future incidents.”

One of the advantages of working with CSC, she said, is the support the county receives. Despite the many upgrades and new enhancements to RISKMASTER through the years, the system has been running smoothly in the county’s data center for more than two decades.

“Like anyone, we sometimes have IT issues, and when we do have bugs to work out, our IT staff and the people at CSC have always gotten us through them quickly and helped us move ahead,” Fasano said. “It’s made us much more efficient and our lives a lot easier.”

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