Supporting: Ensuring Continuity of Care through Implementation of Justice-Health Exchanges

Efficient and effective sharing of information between and among justice agencies and their partner organizations is at the heart of today's efforts across the nation to protect public safety and reduce offender recidivism. Information sharing related to convicted offenders and other justice-involved individuals' presents a critical challenge for the criminal justice, healthcare, mental health, and other treatment services domains. The ability to share information among these domains can dramatically affect public safety and the justice process, in general, and the quality and continuity of care provided, in particular. The gaps in information sharing can be substantial and may be present in medical history, mental health/program assessment information, drug prescription history, disciplinary actions, threat assessment levels, and behavioral issues. In the BJA-funded Justice to Health Project recently completed by the IJIS Institute, a range of opportunities for beneficial, cross-system information exchange between criminal justice and health entities were identified that have the potential to enhance both public safety and health outcomes by reducing redundancies, enhancing continuity of care, and generating efficiencies in both domains. Because of these reasons, the Global Standards Council (GSC) identified the Health and Justice Exchange as one of seven priorities for 2013. The IJIS Institute will utilize grant funds to work with the GSC to prioritize exchanges identified so the GSC can develop a Service Specification Package. The Institute will solicit applicants to become pilot sites and conduct readiness assessments. The Institute will provide technical assistance (TA) using the IJIS TA Process to support selected Justice/Health Information Exchange pilot sites to ensure successful implementation. The Institute will develop measures and mechanisms to determine whether the exchange is working as intended and the impact the exchanges have on the processes and outcomes of both the justice and health systems. NCA/NCF