Audit Report on the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Response and Follow-Up To Pest Control Complaints

Introduction

The objective of this audit was to determine whether the New York City (City) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) adequately responded to and followed up on pest control complaints in a timely manner.

DOHMH is responsible for protecting and promoting the physical and mental health of all New Yorkers and enforcing the City Health Code. Article 151 of the City Health Code contains regulations relating to pest (e.g., rodent) control. That article states that property owners are responsible for cleaning their properties and eliminating conditions that lead to such rodent infestations. DOHMH’s Pest Control Services division (PCS) is tasked with heading the agency’s pest control efforts. PCS operates out of five regional offices in four boroughs, with two different locations in Brooklyn (Staten Island is covered by Brooklyn South).

DOHMH receives pest control complaints from the public through the City’s NYC311 website and the NYC311 Mobile App. Complaints are assigned to the regional offices responsible for covering the geographic areas where the properties referenced in complaints are located. If an inspector finds signs of active rat infestation at a location, the inspector issues a Commissioner’s Order to Abate (COTA) to the property owner, which orders the property owner to correct the deficient conditions. If it is determined after PCS conducts a follow-up inspection, known as a compliance inspection, that the conditions have not been corrected, the inspector reports that the property failed the compliance inspection, and PCS will issue a Notice of Violation (NOV) to the property owner. Depending on the severity of the problem, an inspector may recommend that either an extermination or cleanup be performed at the property, subject to supervisory approval.

To track complaints from registration to close-out, PCS uses a computer system called the Veterinary, Rodent, and Vector Surveillance System (VRVSS). PCS requires its inspection personnel in the field to use handheld devices to record the conditions they identify during inspections and any actions taken. In January 2020, DOHMH completed an upgrade of VRVSS. In Fiscal Year 2018, PCS received 20,946 complaints (according to data from VRVSS).

Audit Findings and Conclusion

The audit found that DOHMH generally responded to pest control complaints, specifically by attempting to inspect the reported conditions, in a timely manner. However, the agency needs to improve its performance with regard to its follow-up action when property owners do not satisfactorily address documented conditions that constitute or lead to rat infestations and the agency needs to take additional remediation actions.

Specifically, our analysis of 50 sampled records for locations that failed DOHMH’s follow-up compliance inspections revealed that a significant proportion—9 cases (18 percent)—were not assessed for possible cleanup within DOHMH’s 90-business-day deadline. Of the nine, five were not assessed at all. Because DOHMH will only perform a cleanup if an assessment deems it to be warranted, no cleanups could be performed—even if the conditions warrant such action—while the assessments remained undone. In fact, as noted, DOHMH closed out 5 of the 9 sampled cases without ever assessing the locations as recommended by its own inspectors and supervisors. The agency’s inaction at that critical stage of its process increased the risk that the deficient conditions and associated health risks will persist uncorrected.

With regard to initial inspections, the audit found that DOHMH has generally met its goals to conduct initial inspection attempts of pest control complaints within its established guidelines.  Specifically, we found that PCS attempted inspections within 10 business days for 81 percent of the complaints it received, which exceeds its stated goal of 70 percent. Additionally, although we noted a few exceptions, we found that for complaints closed out because inspectors could not gain access to the properties, inspectors reportedly made the two required inspection attempts.

However, we also found that supervisors did not consistently meet the minimum requirement to perform one monthly supervisory check per field inspector and that DOHMH does not have an adequate mechanism to assess whether supervisory checks were performed timely. VRVSS also lacks dedicated fields to report the number of follow-up inspections that supervisors conducted, further limiting DOHMH’s ability to assess supervisory oversight of its field inspectors.

Additionally, as noted above, the audit found that a significant percentage of sampled properties that failed the compliance inspections did not receive the recommended assessments and clean-ups that were or may have been warranted in a timely manner, if at all. The audit also found that sampled complaints for which extermination attempts were unsuccessful did not receive the required follow-up actions.

Under other matters, we found evidence that DOHMH has escalated actions for a little over one-third of the properties that received three or more complaints during our scope period.

After we shared our concerns with DOHMH regarding our preliminary findings, DOHMH informed us that its new and enhanced VRVSS (referred to as VRVSS 2), which became operational in January 2020, addresses some of those concerns. Some of the enhancements include the ability to more easily: (1) search location case histories to identify duplicate complaints; and (2) identify properties with multiple complaints and inspection activities for consideration of more focused remediation actions.

Nonetheless, certain weaknesses remain. Specifically, DOHMH is still hindered in the way it tracks supervisory checks—leading to inadequate oversight of field inspectors—and in its handling of duplicate complaints to ensure that those complaints are appropriately labeled and addressed.

Unless DOHMH strengthens its controls over its oversight of pest control complaints and associated compliance inspections and cleanups, the agency will continue to incur an elevated risk that deficient conditions may go uncorrected, increasing the risks to public health.

Audit Recommendations

Based on the audit, we make 14 recommendations, including the following:

• DOHMH should ensure that supervisory checks are not erroneously treated as second attempts at inspection for purposes of determining whether a complaint should be closed due to inspectors’ inability to gain access.
• DOHMH should ensure that all active pest control inspectors receive the requisite number of supervisory checks monthly to ensure that supervisors are aware of any deficiencies in the inspections and that those deficiencies are corrected.
• DOHMH should consider modifying VRVSS 2 to require PCS supervisors to identify in a designated field whether each supervisory check they conduct is a follow-up visit or an accompaniment.
• DOHMH supervisors should ensure that they promptly take exterminators’ recommended actions for DOHMH-exterminated properties, including the completion of second compliance inspections, to ensure that properties needing further remediation actions receive them.
• DOHMH should ensure that it utilizes enhancements to VRVSS to identify properties that are eligible for elevated compliance inspections and proceed with such inspections.
• DOHMH should increase its efforts to refer properties with chronic rodent infestation problems for more enhanced pest control actions.

Agency Response

In its response, DOHMH generally agreed with the audit’s 14 recommendations.