Everett CHART – Assessing Financial Return & Program Effectiveness

Overview

The City of Everett’s Chronic-Utilizer Alternative Response Team (CHART) was designed to address the needs of Everett’s most vulnerable residents who have overlapping health, mental health, legal and substance abuse issues. The Metro Center worked in partnership with the William D. Ruckelshaus Center and the WSU School of Economic Sciences to create an evaluation of the CHART program to gauge its effectiveness and scalability to other areas within Snohomish County.

CHART (CHronic-Utilizer Alternative Response Team) is a team of criminal justice, emergency response, and research partners who collaborate in an effort to reduce the impact of chronic utilizers on health care, emergency services, crisis care, legal and criminal justice systems. By taking a systemic approach, the goal of the program is to create an individualized plan that will have a positive and measurable impact on the use of those resources without simply shifting costs from one partner organization to another. The primary goal of CHART is to decrease the system impacts associated with the disproportionate overlapping service utilization by these individuals; however, it’s anticipated that program efforts will also positively impact the lives of those identified for participation in CHART.

The Metro Center was recruited to develop an evaluation framework and project outcome goals for this program.

In October 2018, the Metro Center began working with the City of Everett’s Public Health and Safety Director/Prosecutor and key CHART stakeholders to develop an evaluation framework and build consensus around the CHART program outcomes. In January/February the Center conducted a ‘pre-assessment’ to ascertain CHART stakeholders’ general goals and perceptions of the evaluation project.

The situation assessment included a series of questions designed to elicit history, CHART involvement and scope, alignment of vision and organizations, collaborative potential and relevant data connections to support the noted purpose. The themes and general opinions noted in the linked brief are based on these assessment interview results. The clarity and diversity of comments formed a rich source of opinion that led to fruitful group conversations at an October 7, 2019 convening in Everett.

The summary brief summarizes key themes, specific comments and several suggested Metro Center / Ruckelshaus Center recommendations to form a starting point for discussion.

• Metropolitan Center for Applied Research and Extension: Martha Aitken and Brad Gaolach
• William D. Ruckelshaus Center: Kevin Harris
• WSU School of Economic Sciences: Bidisha Mandal