Justice and Health Dashboard and Analytic Tool

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

Data driven decision-making depends on the accessibility and dependability of data and information. The challenge faced by counties across the country is how to ensure the availability of aggregate data from the various systems/agencies to drive system-wide policy development and strategic planning to both decriminalize behavioral health and make systemic improvements that support recovery which begins with understanding how individuals with mental illness and/or substance use disorders are entering, continuing within and returning through the criminal justice system. No matter where in the continuum, the uncoordinated ways in which systems interact with these individuals result in fragmented, misaligned care that costs counties millions each year, and more often than not, this approach decreases the chances for these individuals to reach recovery, and does not improve public safety. In 2016, the Adams County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) developed and implemented a dashboard and an ad-hoc analytics query tool to deliver, in real time, anonymized jail custody and behavioral health diagnostic categorical data to measure goals and objectives that were identified during the process of developing a jurisdiction-wide strategic plan using the SAMHSA GAINS Institute, Sequential Intercept Model (SIM). These tools match individual records from the jail management system and the county's mental health agency's electronic health record system, and then ultimately stores these matched records in an anonymized fashion so that personal identifying information is not known, but yet, the data can be analyzed on an individual manner. This data is then visually displayed in the dashboard allowing the end-user to quickly gauge a set of performance measures and the direction of performance. The data is also used in a separate ad-hoc analytics query tool to provide a more sophisticated, descriptive statistical analysis. The project leveraged national information sharing standards, open source tools and a representative governance structure, which ensures the sustainability of the project, and reuse of its framework in other projects.