Stringer Hopes New Web Portal Will Reduce Claims Against City

New York City's tab for paying out personal claims is steadily rising, and Comptroller Scott Stringer is hoping to reverse that trend with the launch of a new initiative that could save the city money and increase efficiency within its agencies. 

Today, Stringer will announce the launch of ClaimStat, a data-driven web portal that will allow the comptroller's Bureau of Law and Adjustment, which handles claims against the city, to analyze these claims and pinpoint which are the most costly. The announcement will be coupled with the first ClaimStat report, which analyzes claims made against the New York City Police Department, Department of Parks and Recreation, Health and Hospitals Corporation, Department of Environmental Protection, and the Department of Sanitation—the five agencies that ClaimStat will initially cover. 

"If you have the same claim over and over again that the city is paying out, well, maybe that agency should look at trying to solve the problem, or change the policy, or correct the mistake," Stringer said. "The best way to get agencies to do that is by presenting them with data that makes them take a look." 

While Stringer said that the intention underlying the ClaimStat initiative was to reduce the total number of claims against the city, there is a clear financial incentive to do so as well. 

The recently signed executive budget sets aside $674 million to pay settlements and judgments from personal claims, which breaks down to more than $80 per resident. As Stringer noted during his budget analysis press conference several weeks ago, the total cost of claims against the city will rise to nearly $800 million over the next four years, and beyond $1 billion after that span.

Most claims against the city come in the form of tort claims, which pertain to personal injury or property damage, but also medical malpractice, police misconduct and civil rights violations. The NYPD, HHC and the Department of Transportation are the subject of 58 percent of the tort claims filed against the city and 69 percent of the amount paid out for tort claims in Fiscal Year 2013 stem from those agencies, according to Stringer's report.

Underneath the ClaimStat microscope, trends begin to emerge within each of these agencies. HHC, for instance, has seen total claims against the agency drop by 18 percent since 2001, owing in part to its specialized legal team that analyzes malpractice cases and makes risk mitigation recommendations. 

However, Stringer pointed out that HHC is also unique in that it is responsible for all of its medical malpractice liabilities up to a maximum amount set by the Office of Management and Budget, meaning that any reduction in tort claims would directly benefit the agency in the form of a more flexible budget.

Stringer's report recommends the city consider similar incentives for the other agencies by essentially pooling the cost of settlements and judgments between agencies in order to "potentially share in the savings realized by more robust risk management practices."

The NYPD has seen the cost and number of claims against the department grow by 31 percent over the last six years alone. While Stringer's report does not draw a correlation between the increased number of claims and the proliferation of stop-and-frisk policing during that time period, one could conclude based on the high number of stops from 2002 to 2012 that the use of the controversial policing tool may have led to an increase in civil rights violations claims.

Stringer pointed out that ClaimStat is modeled off on the NYPD's own CompStat portal, and that the new system could be useful to the police department by enabling it to compare the number of claims made against specific police precincts.

"If you have 42 claims against precinct A and two against precinct B, perhaps we should have a conversation with precinct A," Stringer said. "ClaimStat gives you that online."

It is not immediately clear why Stringer decided not to include the Department of Transportation among the agencies that will be analyzed by his office, but the comptroller did note that ClaimStat would expand "every few months" to include more city departments. 

While Stringer cited similar claims analysis programs around the country in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles, several of those examples focus solely on law enforcement, rather than the comprehensive view that ClaimStat intends to provide.

"The goal here is to spend more money on affordable housing and education and not concede the fact that we’re going to pay out claims. The trajectory keeps going up and up, so we have an opportunity to change that direction by putting these protocols in place and at the same time work with the agencies in a positive way," Stringer said.