How workers’ compensation has protected New Yorkers for more than a century

Gaurav Vasisht is the first Asian American leader of the New York State Insurance Fund, a 110-year-old nonprofit enterprise that provides workers’ compensation, disability and paid family leave coverage for New Yorkers. Vasisht has served in the state Department of Financial Services where he headed its banking division and is the co-author of “Shining a Light on Long COVID,” a report about the long-term implications of the lingering effects of the coronavirus. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First, what are the basics of the New York State Insurance Fund and what does it do?

It’s a remarkable organization. We are the largest workers’ compensation insurer in New York state. We’ve been around for 110 years and deeply rooted in labor particularly the labor movement in the early 20th century. The impetus for the organization happened after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (in 1911). It’s 110 years old, and really came about after the triangle.

NYSIF is a state entity and was established by statute and is different from the private sector insurance companies we compete with. Unlike most state agencies, it’s funded by premiums, not by taxpayers

The purpose is a guaranteed source of insurance, a safety net entity and to make timely indemnity payments. We’re a guaranteed source of coverage for the workers’ comp market. Workers’ comp is required and NYSIF provides that guaranteed coverage and serves as a safety net for the workers’ comp market.

What’s your share of the market? Are you self-sustaining? 

As I mentioned we’re the largest workers’ comp carrier in New York state. Traditionally the market share is roughly one-third. We also write disability and paid family leave. The workers’ compensation share is larger. We are self-sustaining. That is we don’t rely on taxpayers, we rely on premium income.

Generally, it’s around $1.8 billion in premiums, and those dollars help fund payments to injured workers and to have enough reserves to pay out claims over a period of time. The way it works is we are the guaranteed source for coverage. We are the safety net. So, in order for us to do that, we compete with private sector insurance companies in the workers’ comp insurance market. If we were only covering the safety net side, we wouldn’t be able to stay as an entity. The way we are able to stay as an entity is by competing with the private sector.

New York recently became the first state to require paid “prenatal personal leave.” What impact will that have for you – and for New Yorkers?

It’s an important issue, from my point of view it’s an issue of health quality and an example of the governor’s leadership. As a father and son, I’m happy to be part of an administration to make this happen. I’m glad this leadership moment occurred as the first in the nation. This doesn't have any implication for the New York State Insurance Fund. It’s out of a different statute of the insurance. So there’s no implications.

Does NYSIF also weigh in on policy more than your private sector competitors? Any notable examples of this? 

NYSIF weighs in on policy, probably not more than private sector insurers. It’s a unique element we’ve been pursuing; we’ve been helping inform public policy through our data. Some examples of that are our work on long COVID and climate change where we’ve looked at our claims information and that could then support important public policy.

What have you done to address climate change? 

What we’ve done is look at our claims information over the past four months in the summer months, looking at claim frequency during days of extreme heat when the weather service issued an advisory. We found there were more accidents that happened on days of extreme heat, and those accidents happened to be more severe. We then launched a pilot program to help hospitals reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Hospitals are typically some of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas, and they realized that more than anyone else we have to limit greenhouse gas emission and are motivated at reducing them. We launched a pilot program to incentivize hospitals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. If they monitor, measure, report and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over time, we would provide them with a 5% discount on their workers’ comp premiums, and they could use those funds for anything. Each year they meet their milestones in their developed climate action plan, they receive the benefit of a 5% discount on an ongoing basis. We hope that will yield improvement and we hope to expand that program to all health care industries.

You’ve also issued a report last year on long COVID. What are the key takeaways? How are you handling this condition?What we’ve discovered when we looked at our claims data is that long COVID is real. A lot of people had longer-term symptoms, and some people were unable to return to work for more than a year. Women and older workers were more vulnerable than younger men, and people with comorbidities were at higher risk. We looked at the implications of the findings. There are implications for households, businesses and the economy. The work we’ve been doing on the publication of the report has been to work with employers around the state, give them best practices and deal with reintegration challenges that they’re facing during this time period. It’s an example of proactively looking at our data to see what we could find on an important issue of public policy.

How many people are missing from the workforce?

It’s worth examining that very question. Our data showed that a significant number of people had long-term challenges. Many of them were having difficulty returning to work for more than a year. Seniors and women had challenges. We’re not equipped to take on that larger question. We were able to say this had implications for the labor participation rate.

There has been some work done. We convened a gathering with economists and various stakeholders.

We analyzed a little over 3,000 established COVID-19 claims. We were able to derive that this would be people who were infected with COVID-19 at work who then filed a claim for workers’ compensation. So we looked at data for people who filed a claim and whose claim was established. Our agreement was very specific. We only have data for people who file workers’ comp claims.

It was September of 2020, the workers’ comp board made regulatory changes to make it easier to file claims. If they worked in areas where it was easier to contract COVID, say someone worked in a hospital setting or as a bus driver or cashier, it became easier to cross that hurdle.

You’re approaching the three-year mark leading the insurance fund. What have been some of your biggest accomplishments? 

Our work on long COVID and climate has been very important. We’ve also expedited payments to injured workers. We’re approaching some impressive numbers for getting injured workers paid faster. We’re approaching the million payment mark.

We’ve enhanced communications by advancing an app, a mobile claim app that we developed. Oftentimes, claimants would call our center and ask for basic information about their claim. “What’s the status of my claim? When will I receive my check? Who is my claims manager? What are important dates?”

What we decided to do is survey our contact center to find what type of calls are the most common. Then we developed an app, with access to five or six critical questions. All of that information is now at their fingertips.

We’ve supported small businesses. One of the more important elements here to the work we’ve been doing (to) build an agency that’s very strong (is) we’re trying to lift morale, create career paths for people, in recognition of the fact that our 2,000 employees are our strongest, biggest asset.