Performance-based Standards & RiteTrack Partner to Improve Data Entry for PbS customers
Juvenile facilities across the country have opted to work with Performance-based Standards to assist with monitoring confinement conditions in treatment services and residential facilities using national standards and performance outcomes.
PbS is a data-driven improvement model grounded in research that holds juvenile justice agencies, facilities and residential care providers to the highest standards for operations, programs and services.
Twice a year juvenile facilities compile data from day-to-day case management (including incident reports) and enter it into the PbS program interface. The PbS system then analyzes the data to assess whether the facility is meeting performance outcomes and uses this data to create summary reports. These analyses are used to create improvement plans and direct needed reforms in a facility.
Often during the months of April and October, many facilities who partner with PbS for this valuable service struggle with the time it takes for staff to perform daily responsibilities and reenter collected data into the PbS system.
However, in 2017 Handel met PbS at the Michigan Juvenile Detention Association (MJDA) Conference. Both of us saw the potential of a partnership between our two organizations. Over the next few months, we created a RiteTrack module that enables the PbS analysis system to integrate directly with RiteTrack’s case management and reporting solution which eliminates the duplicate data entry staff had to complete for the required reporting periods.
This RiteTrack and PbS integration enables juvenile detention and juvenile justice organizations’ staff to enter daily documentation into one case management system, RiteTrack—which also produces user friendly and reporting for other facility needs—while the integration module imports the required information directly into PbS’s system for the bi-annual reporting periods.
RiteTrack’s juvenile justice module captures required information like incident reports for PbS reporting. Because of the aligned data capture in the systems, information documented in RiteTrack is submitted to PbS through the one-of-a-kind integration module and eliminates duplicate data entry—saving detention staff and administration valuable time.
Contact us if you would like more information on the PbS and RiteTrack integration module or RiteTrack’s solution for juvenile justice and detention facilities.
“This could be described as a ‘textbook project,” said Bud Harris, Director, Information Services. “It began at the right place, the right time, with the right thought processes, and all the right people came together.”
Sometimes projects also provide unintended benefits. Merringer said the RiteTrack project had such a benefit: process improvement. The key philosophy applied in this project was to look at the process first before applying the technology. The staff improved processes during the mapping phase by cutting out redundant efforts and wasted activity. Mapping processes across multiple departments created a visual representation of how each department dealt with their processes and cases, and was valuable because it provided visuals of the processes to assist in directing the technology. Because of this project, the Department can monitor processes and continually improve them to better meet the needs of staff, too.
“Over several years a group of dedicated individuals accepted the challenge of creating an electronic environment for case management for the Department. Members of the team came from every area of the County and Juvenile Department. Working together as a team, the successful development of the Juvenile Department’s RiteTrack Case Management System was realized,” the Department’s launch party invitation read.
