9. Data Sharing in Care Circles

Data sharing is a major tenant of the P-CIS application which promotes collaboration across systems of care for people with behavioral health, mental health, family and social welfare challenges. This document describes the purpose and requirements for data sharing in P-CIS. 

The purpose of data sharing is to support collaboration of care for individuals who are served by multiple agencies across systems of care. Examples of need for data sharing are described by the scenarios that follow. 

A 16-year old male, Sam, is being served by a mental health care provider for 2 years for bipolar disorder by a Mental Health Agency (MHA). That agency is using P-CIS and has years of assessments for Sam from 1/1/2018 forward. Next, Sam’s caregivers are both arrested and Sam is placed in Foster Care. Before assessing Sam for mental health care need, the Foster Care Agency (FCA) who also uses P-CIS, identifies that Sam has been receiving mental health services by the MHA.

A 12-year old female, Sofia, has been in School-Based Mental Health (SBMH) services for 1 year. She has also been served by Primary Care Behavioral Health for 2 years (PCBH). Both agencies use P-CIS but have not realized that Sofia has been served by the other agency or that collaboration in P-CIS is possible. Then, with Sofia’s family’s permission, SBMH reaches out to PCBH to inquire about Sofia’s care. An agreement is established to share information about Sofia with each other for better coordination of care.

A combination of Reporting Units (RUs) and Collaborations objects allows sharing of data between agencies. A group of agencies can work together as part of a Care Circle. Sharing data is temporary and once sharing is ended, the agency to which the data was shared will not retain a copy of the information. The information always belongs to the source agency, and the source agency can stop sharing the information at any time.

One of the first steps to share data between agencies is to create a RU within which Principal and Partner agencies will assign collaboration(s) for sharing. Each agency participating in a RU can choose to share one or more collaborations. Agencies can participate as data sharing recipients only and not share any of their own collaborations, if they choose. Figures 9.1.a1 and 9.1.a2 provide a wireframe example of how the Settings might display available fields for a Principal Agency to initiate a RU.

A person can be assigned to a collaboration only by the person’s source agency. People who are assigned to a collaboration which has been shared with an RU are visible to Organization Administrators of Principal and Partner agencies participating in the RU. If the collaboration was shared with history, then people who are no longer active (but once were) in addition to people who are currently active can be seen by members of the RU.

Once an Organization Administrators from a partner agency can see people shared with him in the People table, he has the ability to add his agency’s Supervisors and Helpers to the people shared with him. This will allow the agency’s Supervisors and Helpers to see the shared people assigned to them or to someone they manager/supervise. Any staff that he adds cannot be made as lead helper for the person; only staff from the person’s source agency can be made lead helper.

Once a staff has permission to see a shared person, the shared person is displayed in their People table. A badge or indicator identifies that the person is a shared record, as exemplified in Figure 2.4.a. This will give indication to the staff that privileges for seeing information or making changes to information for that person will be different than for their own agency’s people that they see. Figure 9.

Organization Administrators with Read Only General Access or Read Only Given Collaboration Access without Historical View: General Access Can see all Persons shared with their agency who are active in a shared collaboration Cannot create or delete people for agencies which are not their own Person Profile Tab Can Edit Person Profile, but can only edit the Helpers Section of the Profile for managing their own staff (Org Amin, Supervisors, Helpers) assigned to the Person Cannot modify any other agency’s Helpers for the Person (cannot add, end or change) Cannot add, modify or delete collaborations assigned to the person Cannot modify the Contact Info, Personal Info or Supports sections of the shared person’s profiles.

Sharing can be stopped in multiple ways by any agency participating in the RU. Once sharing has ended, the source agency will still be able to view the shared helpers, listed in the respective source agency’s persons’ profiles, whose participation will be ended. Option 1: The Principal Agency Ends the RU by Entering an End Date for the RU. After that end date, all sharing once permitted by the RU stops, regardless of any other settings or associations.

This section includes a summary of the high-level business rules. The source data agency who owns the person record retains all of the usual right to view the data for the person regardless of what other agency helper entered the data Any source data agency who has a person to which a Helper is assigned from another agency can see that Helper’s start and end dates in the Person Profile; the source data agency does not see other agency Helpers in their Settings Module.