As a public institution that manages risks for your organization, you meet a variety of needs for your numerous staff and stakeholders. To meet these needs you may need to learn some risk reduction strategies that will help you deliver better services to your organization. Let's look at what LA County did to reduce its risks.
LA County is a public institution that manages risk and claims administration for more than 100,000 staff members. At any one time, the County had about 30,000 claims that were open and needed attention. This had to be administered using nine legacy systems, including manual processes that were very inefficient. Data lived in siloes and no one system provided a holistic view for its risk managers.
For LA County, efficiency in risk reduction and management was its top priority, but these complex legacy systems were not meeting their goal. Given this, the County managers searched for ways to simplify and unify all the components of its risk management systems and processes.
Key Risk Reduction Strategies Deployed by LA County
LA County embraces these key strategies to help reduce its risk.
Understanding the Need
The County's risk managers could not make good decisions while serving their staff because of a lack of clarity stemming from the many disparate claims systems and processes. Understanding what the County required led to their seeking for a universal performance-based risk solution that would make it easy to manage their risk and claims program. The intent was to have a holistic view that reduces risks and makes administration easier.
Learn more about LA County's needs.
Envisioning the Outcome
To manage the complexity of their systems and processes, they envisioned a system that would unify all aspects of their risk management program, including:
- Risk management
- Claims administration
- Corrective action planning
- Disability management
- Incident reporting
- Loss control
- Data analytics
- Enterprise legal management
- Leave absence management
The vision was to integrate these various aspects into one unified performance-based system that would deliver results in two clicks or less. The risk management system would need to be more nimble and flexible for current and future use.
It needed to be an adaptable and configurable system to enable future customization. The system also needed to drive total risk reduction by reducing the number of claims, synchronizing data to avoid double compensation, and reducing the time wasted in processing claims.
Deploying a Strategic Solution
With the above vision in mind, they looked for a single system that would bring the vision to life.
Since LA County pays out about $400 million claims per year, they needed a risk management system that would not only enable them to process such claims efficiently but also give them access to data that could be used to adjust their risk management practices and make quick decisions.
Choosing a Vendor
After a thorough procurement process, they chose Ventiv Risk Management and Claims Administration System as the best system that met their needs The Ventiv team was tasked with bringing the vision to life by providing a single interface that allowed easy impute of risk management information, collaboration across different departments, enabled data extraction with two clicks, and was fully integrated. With the task in mind, the Ventiv team had to create a system that could do the following:
- Streamline all general liability claims, small claims, medical malpractice claims, and workers' compensation claims
- Manage short term disability and long term disability claims
- Manage loss control and prevention, inspector general's corrective action plans
- Manage enterprise legal matters
- Manage various self-insurance and commercial insurance programs( general liability, automobile liability, medical malpractice, professional liability, automobile liability, medical malpractice, professional liability, sexual misconduct, property damage, airport and aircraft liability, fire insurance, etc.)
- Manage absence and leave management
- Manage incident reporting
- Track post-pandemic return to work initiatives
To build this system, they had to make some key strategic decisions before the project kicked off, including:
- Assemble a steering committee with members from all the departments.
- Consult with hundreds of stakeholders to determine what they required from the new system.
- Use a system that already had a technology base instead of a custom-built risk management system.
The Result? A Single Unified Risk Management System
The project was one of the most complex risk management programs to ever be deployed in the history of the County but it was delivered two years before the projected timeline of 2023. With the implementation of the Risk Management Information System by Ventiv, the following outcomes were achieved:
- A single unified risk management system that unified all aspects of the risk management program was implemented.
- A user-friendly interface to enable self-service so that the staff could view the status of their claims without calling the organization.
- A data analytics system that gave an overview of all system components and also pulled all data history of each staff.
- A new module for COVID-19 claims was quickly built before the pandemic shutdown, which enabled LA County to transition to work-from-home and also manage back-to-work activities.
- Post-pandemic tracking and return to work initiatives were managed easily.
Conclusion
Through collaboration, teamwork, and experience, the Ventiv team was able to pull off this large-scale project and the management of the County provided the necessary feedback that made implementation and adoption easy. The risk reduction strategies that were adopted by LA County management have shown that you can engineer transformation in even the largest systems with the right technology and expertise.
Learn More about Ventiv Risk Management Information System.
