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STARS: An Analysis Tool for Higher Education Institutions
When it comes to risk management, all organizations need timely information in order to make informed choices to reduce their total cost of risk. With this in mind, Marsh developed its Risk Management Information System, STARS.
STARS is more than just a claims system. It is a complete system for consolidating and analyzing the wide range of information that must be analyzed to understand the total cost risk. This information include incidents reports, losses, exposures, property values, safety and loss control recommendations, and insurance policy structure. In addition to analyzing data, STARS lets users attach video and audio files, scanned images, property and policy records, spreadsheets, and other documents. STARS clients may now also access their data via the Internet.
Risk Concerns
In a recent survey, nearly 150 higher education risk managers and business officers ranked their major risk management concerns for the future. Here are their rankings:
- Campus safety regulatory compliance;
- Employment practices and transportation safety;
- Occupational safety computer-related risk;
- Campus security health care malpractice; and
- Pollution risk, technology transfer/products liability risk.
STARS addresses many of the concerns related to these issues
STARS Solutions for Higher Education
How does STARS address the issue of physical distance between campuses of an institution and the creation of funding groups. This kind of situation often results in scattered and dissimilar information.
Data consolidation is the first step. STARS lets clients take data from many separate or preexisting systems, consolidate that data so that it is uniform, update it on a scheduled basis when necessary, and improve its accuracy and quality. Marsh's Information Center in Chicago is staffed by more than 40 conversion specialists fully dedicated to the writing, testing, and running of data consolidation and data quality assurance routines.
In addition, STARSWeb, the updated extension of STARS, lets authorized users become a member of the client's user community and monitor data remotely. STARSWeb also lets users:
- Add claims and incidents from remote locations;
- Monitor claims through a user-friendly interface;
- Analyze loss information on demand through standard reports; and
- Distribute reports electronically via the Internet.
Can STARS track HPL and ELL incidents and claims?
Clients can use STARS to track their Educators Legal Liability (ELL) and Healthcare Professional Liability (HPL) claims and incidents. STARS has more than more than 100 "special use fields" (including 40 date fields) per coverage, in addition to basic identifying information and claim financials. All claim screen captions and code tables can be customized by line of coverage. STARS can therefore accommodate information special to HPL and ELL incidents and claims. These claims can also be reported long after then happen and can remain open for a long time.
Because HPL and ELL claims can remain open for a long time, STARS' ability to do prior-valuation reporting and point-in-time comparisons is especially useful. And since HPL and ELL claims can be reported long after they happen, STARS has special features for analyzing lag time between occurrence and report. In STARS, losses can be analyzed on a claims-made or an occurrence basis, and the policy module tracks the information special to claims-made policies.
My instiitution's employment-related claims have increased dramatically during the past 5 years. How would STARS help me manage these lawsuits?
STARS has a litigation management features and functions that can help you analyze the specifics of your employment practices (sexual harassment, discrimination on the basis of sex, age or disability) which can result in claims and lawsuits.
Many of our concerns relate to safety and loss control issues. How does STARS handle that?
Loss information: STARS provides supplemental fields designed to capture information about the nature and circumstances of each loss. This feature is useful for analyzing and tracking statistics relevant to the specific loss environment of our clients.
- Reports: Once coded analysis data is collected, it can be analyzed by using a series of reports designed for STARS by Marsh loss control consultants. STARS contains an ad hoc report writer useful in exploring various "what if" scenarios and printing customized reports. Color printing is supported.
- Query: The program includes an interactive query builder supporting "and/or" nesting. This allows the user to limit reports to include only the data that is of interest.
- Graphs: STARS includes an integrated graphics package. Most summary reports may be printed in a graph format. Graphs may be customized via the interactive graphing engine. Many different graph types are supported.
- Cost-of-risk analysis: Allocations by region, division, location, etc. are all supported within STARS.
- Custom coding: STARS allows for the translation of generic service provider codes into customized, industry-specific codes. All code tables (i.e., cause codes, loss descriptions, coverages, location structures, etc.) are fully customizable to match client needs.
- User defined data fields: The STARS data screens may be customized to support additional client-specific data fields. This allows our clients to track data elements that they find useful in managing claim costs according to their specific business needs. All fields within the system (including user-defined fields) are available from the report writer.
How does STARS tie incidents and claims to the proper policy period?
This can be difficult because some years there was occurrence-based coverage available and some years there was only claims-made coverage available. However, your Marsh representative will be able to assist you for all claims-related issues.
We need to be able to notify excess carriers. Can STARS do that?
The STARS policy module tracks both occurrence-based and claims-made policies, including retro and tail dates. Claims can thus be reliably tied to the proper policy periods. The STARS policy module also tracks multi-layer coverage structures, including the financial attaching points of each layer. The powerful report writer can then be used to identify instances where notice to excess carriers is needed, and create the notification letters. STARS also builds a "thread" of which policy takes over when a given policy's aggregate or per-occurrence limits are exhausted. This feature helps identify the excess carriers who may need to be notified.
Can STARS track physicians we employ? How about co-defendants?
The integrated Rolodex and Policy modules allow higher education institutions to track and manage this information. Information about co-defendants can be tracked in the integrated Rolodex; an unlimited number of Rolodex entries can be attached to each incident or claim. This permits proper case management of each case, and also allows analyses by Rolodex record (for example, "all cases where "x" is our co-defendant").
The security of our data is a major concern. What has Marsh done about that?
Marsh is the first insurance broker certified by the National Computer Security Agency for Web site security, and has been ranked by Information Week as #1 in use of information technology among the 32 companies in the insurance category. These awards reflect our commitment to -- and success in -- using technology to help our clients reduce overall cost of risk.
A number of higher education organizations in both the private and the public sector use STARS to manage their complex risk, including Vanderbilt University, University of Nebraska, Genesis (University Risk Funding Group) and the Michigan University Self Insurance Corporation. STARS is currently used by more than 800 public and private sector organizations.
CONTACT:
Anthony Guzman
Marsh - Risk Technologies
212-948-2842
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