If the risk management division of Prince William County, Va., were an automobile, it would be fueled by data that propels the car along the best routes to avoid accidents.

Automobile accident frequency, average workers compensation claim costs, and employee days away from work due to injuries — each dissected by cause or by the county department generating the losses — are just a few of the statistics the risk management division collects and analyzes.

It tracks the data to educate county workers, department directors, county executives and political leaders on where safety improvements are needed.

“It's a beautiful thing (when) you can go through your claims and identify exactly what is happening where, what day of the week, what time of the day, and put the right program together” to reduce losses, said Christopher E. Martino, Prince William County's deputy county executive.

The data is distributed in weekly reports provided to the county Safety & Health Council, a group of representatives from several county departments who help promote safety and determine risk management priorities.

Weekly data updates also go to department directors. Similarly, quarterly loss analysis reports on vehicle accidents and workers comp claims go to the directors as do semiannual analysis reports on open workers comp claims.

There is also an annual Risk Report the risk management division produces. The 2012 Risk Report contains 82 pages of easy-to-read color charts showing each county department's losses for the year. The report also contains information on the county's insurance expenses and bullet points highlighting risk management division programs and services to reduce exposures.

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The report helps communicate risk management's role and calls attention to loss prevention needs and improvements, said Lori J. Gray, Prince William County risk management division chief.

“This is selling your risk management program,” Ms. Gray said. “You have to have data to justify your existence and know how you are doing.”

Mr. Martino agrees.

“When you are in front of (county) decision-makers arguing for additional resources (for loss control programs), you have to have the numbers,” Mr. Martino said.

Data helped him convince county leaders several years ago, for example, to invest dividends from the county's self-insurance program in loss prevention measures, Mr. Martino said. Before that, the self-insurance program's surplus did not flow to risk management programs.

Without data pinpointing how investments in safety and risk management reduce costs, county decision-makers would see requests for funding merely as “another expense” that needs to be cut, Mr. Martino said.

Prior to Ms. Gray's hire as the county's risk manager in 1999, the only risk management data available came from a third-party administrator and “frankly, that data was useless,” Ms. Gray said.

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Implementing her plans to track and document incident information began in 2001, when she contracted with Blue Bell, Pa.-based Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association Insurance Co. for TPA services, Ms. Gray said.

Her contract calls for PMA to provide her with customized data on workers comp, general liability and third-party auto liability claims. Her risk management division uses an internal database to track first-party auto liability claims and property losses.

Now, “we can break data for incidents all the way down to a fire station and even break it down to an individual medic unit,” Ms. Gray said.

The PMA contract requires the insurer TPA to deliver claims data in a format that may be different for each county department based on each department's specific needs, Ms. Gray said.

Each department “determined how they wanted (the data) collected because they are the ones that are going to use it for their benefit,” Ms. Gray said.

But developing internal databases and data tracking systems required Ms. Gray's risk management division to streamline the county's incident reporting forms to make it easier for employees involved in accidents to explain what happened, she said.

The efforts have won her recognition. In 2007, the Public Entity Risk Institute honored Ms. Gray for benchmarking motor vehicle collision performance.

But her division doesn't stop at just tracking data and producing reports. There is also risk management outreach. After the annual risk report's release, for instance, Ms. Gray's team presents its findings at a management meeting for county directors.

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Similarly, the report's data is presented to midlevel managers working in each of the county's larger departments.

That gives Ms. Gray an opportunity to collect input from managers on what she can do to help reduce their exposures.

“For example,” Ms. Gray said, “when we met with (the fire department) this year, they brought up strain and sprain injuries from medics lifting stretchers.”

That has led to a pilot program partially funded by the risk management division to see if automated lift stretchers can reduce fire department injuries.