Looking Glass Analytics, Inc. (LGAN) offers a diverse range of products and services to social and health services agencies. We provide sophisticated on-line management tools and analytic support to behavioral health agencies that oversee, manage, or provide substance abuse or mental health prevention or treatment services.

Analytic Services to Behavioral Health Programs

To run an efficient behavioral health agency or program, publicly-funded or otherwise, managers need timely information on a variety of important performance measures. To be most effective, they need this information for all entities that facilitate or provide care. State policymakers, regional treatment planners and local service providers all benefit from tools that provide that kind of information quickly, easily, and comprehensively.

For more than a decade, our web-based reporting solutions have been helping behavioral health programs to bridge the gap between their need for information and their ability to produce it efficiently. Our products and services allow clients to analyze data on the patients receiving services, the services provided, and their outcomes. Our tools add value to the volumes of administrative data that treatment programs collect by providing the information needed to improve the delivery of services, inform policy decisions, monitor program outcomes, comply with state and federal reporting requirements, and meet a myriad of other needs. The types of services we provide include:

  1. Automated functions such as data processing, performance measurement/contract monitoring, and routine management reporting
  2. Evaluation expertise, which insures that the reports we develop provide valid and reliable answers to client questions
  3. On-line analytic tools for report generation and data query, and
  4. Ad hoc analytic and research support including quick-turnaround information requests, small research studies, and patient surveys

Monitoring Performance Benchmarks: A Brief Case Study:

LGAN developed, maintains and hosts performance monitoring applications for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), and has done so for the past decade. We take data from several different DSHS databases, process it as necessary and maintain a web portal so that authorized users can access and analyze the data. These services allow for the monitoring of many different measures, but recently DSHS requested a new monitoring report to use when evaluating the performance of both counties and providers. They were interested in monitoring patient retention, and had a complex algorithm for defining that concept involving admission and discharge dates, encounter dates and encounter types. Rather than performing that work in-house, or having the counties or providers doing their own analyses, they asked LGAN to capture this concept in series of reports and make them available to all authorized users. Our roles, in addition to publishing new reports on the web, were to provide research guidance in the formation of the measure and to perform ad hoc analysis to support their measure of choice. These reports are now available to the over 1000 authorized users of the service, and to any county or provider wishing to access it. Having it done by LGAN and incorporating it into our online analysis service means that the methods are consistent, regardless of which authorized user generates the report, and the reports are automatically updated monthly with new data.

How We Work with Clients

Though the needs of each client are unique, LGAN works with each client in a similar manner. The following steps are followed to insure that each client gets the information they need:

  1. Gain an understanding of their business needs. Our background in behavioral health research assists that understanding.
  2. Gain an understanding of their data
  3. Determine their key information needs, performance measures, benchmarks, etc.
  4. Develop web interfaces and report templates that allow users to generate the information they need.
  5. Revise based on customer feedback (if needed) and publish to the web
  6. Provide user education: on both using the service and interpreting results.

Flexible User Management

Complex healthcare systems typically include many people with a variety of different information needs. In addition, the data is sensitive. Confidentiality concerns and regulatory requirements usually mean that a system of differential access to information is necessary. LGAN’s user management tools make it easy to disseminate information, and to restrict that dissemination when it is appropriate to do so. For some clients, we’ve created a level of public access, so that those not directly involved in a behavioral healthcare system can be given aggregated performance statistics in a way that protects privacy and confidentiality of patients.

Automated Data Processing and Reporting

Acquisition of data extracts of admissions, discharges, treatment services, medications, and treatment settings on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis allow us to provide highly customized sets of management reports delivered electronically (e-mail, web site updates, etc.) to any number of constituents or stakeholders.

Cloud Computing Advantage

LGAN hosts interactive analytic tools that allow any authorized user to conduct ad hoc analyses or generate pre-formatted reports updated with the latest data. Our use of the “Cloud” allows us to offer these tools via the Internet as "zero-footprint" computing services, removing nearly all the burden from the IT staff of providing analytic programming and infrastructure support. This frees up core staff to use their resources on providing quality patient care.

Sample Analytic Topics & Tools

  • Admission and Discharge summary reports
  • Retention and Length of Stay Analyses
  • Analysis of key treatment milestones, such as Entry, Initiation and Engagement
  • Treatment Sequence Analyses: Detoxification-Assessment-Admission
  • Psychiatric hospital follow-ups: entry into community-based outpatient treatment
  • Policy Analyses & Contract monitoring
  • Analysis using other sources of data, i.e. employment & criminal justice involvement
  • Ad hoc analysis of:
    • Admissions
    • Discharges
    • Length of Stay
    • Retention

For nearly twenty years, Looking Glass Analytics, Inc., has provided research, analytic, and technical support to a variety of local, state, and federal criminal justice partners. Clients include local police and sheriff’s departments, city and county jails, state corrections departments, local and federal prosecutors, public defenders, district courts, liquor control agencies, and national criminal justice research agencies. Further detail on some of this work can be found by clicking on the tabs below:

Corrections

Custom Analytic Tools and Services to Jails

For nearly two decades, Looking Glass Analytics has provided a range of analytic products and consulting services that help city, county, and regional jails bridge the gap between their need for information and their ability to produce it efficiently. We add value to the volumes of administrative data jails collect to improve jail management, inform policy decisions, accomplish complex billing and accounting, comply with state and federal reporting requirements (e.g. SCAAP, Census counts, etc.), forecast future inmate populations, and meet a myriad of other needs. The types of services we provide include:

  1. Automated functions such as data processing, billing services, and routine management reporting
  2. On-line analytic tools for report generation and data query,
  3. Ad hoc analytic and research support including quick-turnaround information requests, small research studies, and inmate surveys, and,
  4. Jail4cast.com - a new sophisticated on-line jail population forecasting and tracking tool

Jail4cast.com

Jail4cast.com provides an easy-to-use, yet comprehensive tool for creating monthly jail inmate population forecasts for Jail Admissions, Average Daily Population (ADP), and Average Length of Stay (ALOS). Combining statistical trends from previous time periods with input from local experts, users create forecasts for a number of unique jail sub-populations. This way, local knowledge of future or past policy impacts can be used to modify a purely statistical result when appropriate. Forecast results for each of these sub-populations can be evaluated, reviewed, and updated independently anytime and flexibly rolled up into larger aggregate totals. Sub-populations can represent one or more demographic and/or status groups such as sex, age, charge type (e.g. misdemeanant/felon), sentence status (pretrial, sentenced), classification, custody (secure, other), etc. Regular data updates of actual admissions, ADP, and ALOS numbers are tracked against the forecasts. Find out more at Jail4cast.com.

Steps to create a forcast:

  1. Upload historical admissions / release records (ADP, ALOS are calculated automatically)
  2. Set and save forecast assumptions for each subgroup
  3. Evaluate and use subgroup and aggregate forecasts

Steps to track new data against an existing forecast:

  1. Upload new jail admissions / release records periodically to track against forecast
  2. Revise forecast assumptions when new policy or other impacts are identified

Automated Data Processing and Reporting

Acquisition of data extracts of booking, charge, classification, housing, billing, phone, and/or other jail management data on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis allow us to provide highly customized sets of management reports delivered electronically (e-mail, web site updates, etc.) to any number of constituents or stakeholders.

Cloud Computing Advantage

In addition to our jail4cast.com product, we host interactive analytic tools that allow jail staff or other stakeholders to conduct ad hoc analyses or generate pre-formatted reports updated with the latest data. Our use of the “Cloud” allows us to offer these tools via the Internet as “zero-footprint” computing services, removing nearly all the burden from the IT staff of providing analytic programming and infrastructure support. IT folks often have their hands full already maintaining the jail management and other systems.

Sample Analytic Topics & Tools

  • Automate complex billing rules and deliver invoices
  • Booking, Average Daily Population (ADP), and Average Length of Stay (ALOS) summaries
  • Frequent Flyer Analyses
  • Jail Population Forecasting
  • Inmate Census
  • Pharmacy Rosters
  • Housing History including Cellmate Lookup
  • State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP)
  • Contract bed statistics
  • Arresting agency reports
  • Classification analyses
  • FTA, DV, Drug, and other charge-specific issues
Courts & Law Enforcement

Multnomah County, OR, Circuit Court (MCCC, Oregon District #4)

The MCCC needed more information in finer detail about their court operations and case processing. An automated tool acting on raw data provided acquired from the State’s data system would provide consistent and easily accessible court performance metrics. In response, LGAN staff developed a web-based application to provide on demand data queries that supports the MCCC. Analytic topics include cases, charges, case processing time, terminations by trial and trial type. Additional variables are available for analytic drill down including time frame, case type (i.e. criminal, small claims, domestic, probate, etc.), case class (i.e. felony, misd, violation, etc) and others.

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN)

Initiated during the GW Bush administration, PSN was a federally funded effort to reduce gun crime through increased prosecution and stricter sentencing. PSN funding flowed locally to support U.S. Attorney jurisdictions across the country to best address local issues related to gun crime. LGAN was selected as PSN Research Partner for the US Attorney Districts of Western Washington and Guam. As research partner, we assisted a multi-agency task force consisting of representatives of law enforcement, prosecution, and corrections by using data to help define the gun crime problem, suggesting possible interventions, and evaluating the outcome of those interventions. LGAN also delivered an analytic tool that acquired, processed, and provided access to statistics related to gun crime in police and sheriff’s jurisdictions across Washington State. Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data were acquired from the Washington Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Association to support the web-based tool.

Washington State Office of Public Defense

LGAN evaluated the success of three pilot courts across the state that received additional funds and consultation to improve the legal services provided to the indigent. LGAN analyzed court and attorney records to determine the effectiveness of the pilots in three areas: attorney caseload, access to legal representation and the quality of public defense services.

King County, WA, Superior Court

LGAN provided data processing and analytic support to a broader effort to assess the delivery of Superior Court services to children and families in King County. Results from this work included numerous iterations of case mix and case processing measures and geographic mapping and travel time analysis of court case participants.

Looking Glass Analytics provides analytic and program support to Federal, State, and Local public health agencies with a variety of products and services, examples of which include:

Health Education & Communication

Tuberculosis disease (TB) is an immediate global emergency. Worldwide, 10 million people develop active TB and 1.6 million die every year. 1 million children get sick annually and 1 in 4 die. TB kills more people than any other infectious agent on the planet and is particularly harmful of people living with HIV/AIDS, killing 1 in 4 of those who die. Approximately 4 of the 10 million annual cases go undetected or unreported. Drug-resistant TB is on the rise as well. Amazingly, TB is treatable and often preventable and most cases can be cured for $30 US.

TBwarrior.com is a global health education, communication, and marketing enterprise supporting the global effort to eradicate TB. The goal is to raise conscious awareness and de-stigmatize TB disease among patients and care providers to increase care seeking and care delivery, ultimately saving lives. The online platform will reach millions of TB patients and care providers by delivering creative episodic storytelling online (e.g., YouTube), amplified by the latest digital marketing and social media strategies.

Find out more at www.TBwarrior.com

Student Assistance Prevention-Intervention Services Program (SAPISP)

In Washington State, the Student Assistance Prevention-Intervention Services Program (SAPISP) was created to address the problems of youth that have been impacted by substance use/abuse and have experienced barriers to learning. Intervention specialists work in schools throughout the state to provide early alcohol and other drug prevention and intervention services, to assist in referrals to treatment providers and to strengthen the transition back to school where appropriate.

Since 2013 LGAN has maintained and enhanced the development of https://www.wasapisp.com/, a data collection and reporting application. The site gives interventionist specialists a convenient and secure way to enter and retain data on students they serve as well as a series of reports to monitor student progress and outcomes. LGAN works together on this project with staff at RMC Research and the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Health Data Processing

Alaska Trauma Registry: A state-level trauma registry acquires injury data from most or all hospitals in a state. These data are highly valuable, supporting injury prevention planning, monitoring, and evaluation, and 2) quality control processes for improving injury care. As they are acquired, these records must be aggregated and processed further for analytic use. The State of Alaska recently contracted with Looking Glass Analytics to help routinize, update, and maintain processes that prepare and deliver trauma registry data, ready for analytic use.

Consistent Care Services: The goal of Consistent Care Services (CCS) is to engage social resources within the community and collaborate on comprehensive care plans that address the health and social challenges faced by underserved patients. One problem they directly address is the inappropriate use of hospital emergency departments.

In 2015 Consistent Care contracted with LGAN for the analysis and evaluation of emergency department records. On a monthly basis since 2015, LGAN analyses emergency department usage across the state and provides automating reporting that compares the use of this costly form of health care over time. LGAN reporting documents the effectiveness of CCS case management services in reducing costly emergency care. https://consistentcare.org

Marijuana/Cannabis Analytics

In 2016, the Multnomah County Health Department was awarded a grant by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) to evaluate the impact of varying state and local polices on health, social, and economic outcomes of legalized marijuana in Washington and Oregon. Along with researchers from RAND Corporation, Oregon Health Authority, and the University of Washington, Looking Glass Analytics provided analytic support to this project including:

  • acquiring periodic data feeds of the statewide seed-to-sale relational databases of cannabis product types, chemistry, supply chain, and sales transaction data
  • aggregating that data by grower, processor, and store
  • geocoded all active, pending, and closed cannabis store locations
  • aggregating cannabis and US census data geographically by city, county, tribal areas, and relevant administrative combinations to support municipal policy comparisons and analysis
  • empirical analysis of store locations, store volumes, consumer travel time, and other factors to determine and smooth market and population catchment areas and sizes.
  • Implement routines for allocation of data to different sized geographic areas (e.g., ZIP Code to school district, etc.)

Mapping Opioid and Other Drug Issues

Every community in the country has been affected by the misuse of opioids, but few communities have the information necessary to identify needs, resources and gaps in available services. With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Washington State Department of Health, LGAN staff helped identify local community needs by mapping the locations and densities of adverse consequences of opioid use such as overdoses, hospitalizations, risky prescribing practices, etc.). We also created tools to identify community-level resources, like locations of treatment facilities, medication-assisted access and prescription drug disposal sites.

Alcohol and Drug Prevention and Treatment Analysis

With an innovation grant from NIH/NIDA and assistance from researchers at the University of Washington, Looking Glass Analytics conducted mapping, analysis, reporting, and surveillance of alcohol and drug use data in King County, Washington. Leveraging and integrating a variety of data sources, we produced analytic maps and reports of the patterns and trends in these data over time. Examples of data sources include:

  • Drug seizures by law enforcement
  • Alcohol- and drug-related deaths from the WA DOH Death Certificate System
  • Deaths from drug-caused overdoses, from two sources, either WA DOH or county medical examiners
  • Substance abuse treatment and detox records from publicly-funded clients
  • Alcohol- and drug-related hospitalizations from WA DOH

Small Area Intercensal Population Estimates

Rationale. Knowing how many people live in a particular area is critical to understanding and responding to outbreaks or clusters of disease, planning prevention and treatment programs, and allocating public health resources. Population counts of total population and certain sub-groups that define groups at risk (e.g. young, elderly, men, women, etc.) are necessary to calculate rates of occurrence, which when compared, can help identify populations and places with that higher or lower impact for any particular public health event or phenomenon.

It is very helpful to public health practitioners that the U.S. population is counted once every ten years during the national decennial census. Unfortunately, the population is ever changing, just about everywhere. The smaller the area, the more likely that population changes can impact public health statistics. For example, a new apartment complex or retirement community could double the population in a neighborhood and radically change the age composition. Closing a military base could decimate a population in that area but cause a boom in another. That is why estimating changes in population between censuses (intercensal estimates) are important.

Work for WA OFM. Over the past several years we have assisted the Washington State Office of Financial Management in producing small area population estimates for intercensal years to improve per capita rate calculations for service use and other epidemiologic research. Estimation processes include trending, synthetic estimation, and raking, against disparate data sources including decennial census base data plus Washington State annual state, county and city population estimates and forecasts to produce annual population estimates with detailed demographics at small geographic levels – usually aggregations of census blocks (i.e. census block groups, school districts, etc.). Demographically, all estimates are broken out into population subgroups defined by the intersection of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin.

Disease Surveillance Software

With so many competing demands for public health funds and staff time, few resources are left for collection and analysis of case data. Yet, you cannot manage a public health program, much less a disease outbreak, without quality data.

In partnership with JBS International, Inc., we developed EpiAnywhere™, an online tool where public health agencies and professionals—in the United States and internationally—can track cases, analyze critical public health trends and program performance, and report case data automatically to national and international health authorities (i.e., CDC and WHO). Over more than a decade, EpiAnywhere™ provided surveillance for tuberculosis (TB), sexually transmitted diseases, and Hansen’s disease (leprosy).

Looking Glass Analytics maintains expertise in all phases of survey research including: project administration, data collection, sample design, questionnaire development, data analysis, report writing. We also have built an online platform for delivering survey results to the public and/or securely to authenticated users. This platform is customized to the content and reporting needs of each client. An example of this platform can be found at http://www.AskHYS.net.

www.AskHYS.net is an online service designed to access, analyze and disseminate data from the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey (HYS). Via the web site, access to State and county-level HYS results are public and available to anyone, while school district and building level results are available only to authenticated users. The system will suppress any data that has the potential to compromise participating students' anonymity. LGAN designed and deployed the web service in 2007 and continues to host and update the service when new data are acquired or reports are created.

Results from the biennial survey years 2002 - 2016 are available on the web site in the following formats:

  • Fact Sheets: a set of 1-page, pre-formatted reports on various adolescent behavior topic areas such as, alcohol use, bullying, and diet. Each report contains trended and some state comparisons.
  • Reports: an archive of 15-25 page frequency reports for all of the questions asked on the survey. Also includes statewide analytic reports with survey information and trend results.
  • Q x Q Analysis: an interactive data query system. The Q x Q allow users run analysis and produce results that answer questions they have about adolescent student behaviors.
The survey results are an important source of needs-assessment data for school districts, community-based organizations, local health and human service agencies, and state agencies. The results are used to monitor the health status of adolescents and track progress on state and federal education and health-related goals. The information from the Healthy Youth Survey may be used to identify trends in patterns of behavior over time. State-level results may also be used to compare national and other state-level results. State agencies, local health jurisdictions, county prevention coordinators, community mobilization coalitions, community public health and safety networks, and others use this information to guide policies and programs that serve youth.

Administering the Healthy Youth Survey

LGAN was awarded contracts to administer the 2012, 2014 and 2016 HYS surveys to over 1000 schools across Washington State. This involves school recruitment and registration, shipping and receiving of survey booklets to and from over 1000 schools, and processing/scanning over 200,000 completed surveys. The scanned results are used to produce analytic reports for particpating schools and school districts, create an analytic data set for researchers, and serve as the data supporting the AskHYS.net web site.

The Healthy Youth Survey represents a collaborative effort among the Department of Health (DOH), the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), the Department of Social and Health Services' Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery (DBHR), the Department of Commerce (Commerce), the Family Policy Council (FPC), the Liquor Control Board (LCB), and contractors, Looking Glass Analytics and Rainier Theory.

To learn more or use the public access component of AskHYS.net, please visit http://www.askhys.net/.

One example of an online tool is the state-of-the-art Geographic Enforcement Management Service (GEMS™). While GEMS™ supports liquor law enforcement, the application can be modified to support other licensing or enforcement domains, such as tobacco, health inspections, medical licensing, etc.

MOODI
Mapping Opioid and Other Drug Issues

Every community in the country has been affected by the misuse of opioids, but few communities have the information necessary to identify needs, resources and gaps in available services. LGAN and partners developed the Mapping Opioid and Other Drug Issues (MOODI) to fill this need for communities in Washington State.

With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, MOODI, an online mapping tool, was developed for the Washington State Department of Health. MOODI lets users identify community needs by mapping the locations and densities of adverse consequences of opioid use, such as overdoses and hospitalizations, along with risky prescribing practices. In addition, users can identify community-level resources, like locations of treatment facilities, and medication-assisted access point and prescription drug disposal sites.

The maps available in MOODI show results for fixed geographies like counties or zip codes, and for smaller areas based on the actual locations of events. Grid analyses are also available, with the size of the grid based on the number of events being counted.

GEMS™
Geographic Enforcement Management Service

GEMS™ was designed and developed to support state alcohol and beverage control agencies and local law enforcement agencies in their efforts to conduct inspections and investigation of retail liquor businesses. Breaking ground on many fronts, the GEMS™ platform delivered seamless integration of multiple periodic data feeds into one stop data presentations and deployed a number of innovative interactive components during the development of the system including:

  • A dashboard of "widgets" offering "Top Ten" lists of liquor licensees with the most liquor-law complaints and violations, alcohol sales, police dispatches, and other measures configurable for each user by geography, time, and other data filters
  • Licensee-specific lists of liquor control visits and violations, police calls-for-service, and reported sales taxes
  • Map interface layer where quantitative data, such as liquor control officer visits, police calls-for-service, or alcoholic beverage sales at a particular licensee, are overlaid on familiar internet base maps from Microsoft Bing Maps.
  • Pop-up map legends that allow users to turn on/off certain map levels (i.e. only show the liquor retailers who have not been visited this year) or filter the data to be mapped for specific date ranges, data values, etc.
  • A dynamic grid layer that helps users visualize patterns in data density. In GEMS-A, this visualization shows concentration of licensees and police calls-for-service. The amount of area covered by the grid cell varies depending on how far in or out the user has zoomed allowing map pattern to be evaluated at any geographic scale.

In-house GIS Technology

We have expertise in several GIS web services API environments and their collection of API modules, most prominently those associated with Bing! Maps web application development. We also maintain a full suite of ESRI Arc/Info-ArcGIS software licenses on site and licenses for other supporting products including MapInfo desktop GIS, SAS, SQL Server, etc.