Measuring Protective Order Outcomes in Oregon
A claims-based proposal for OHA review
I. Executive Summary
Oregon serves thousands of protective orders each year, yet has no localized way to see what happens to the people involved after service. Whether service is followed by greater safety, worsening crisis, higher health costs, or suicide risk is unknown in Oregon data, for petitioners and respondents alike.
This statement requests a Phase One feasibility and data-scoping study: fixed in cost, fixed in duration, changing nothing about how orders are issued or served, and giving no private party access to protected data. It asks whether Oregon can measure what it currently cannot see.
II. The Measurement Gap
In the fifty years since the Family Abuse Prevention Act was enacted in 1976, Oregon has built no outcome tracking around the orders it authorizes. The state cannot say what share of people served with an order experience a behavioral health crisis in the months that follow, what that costs, how petitioners fare compared to respondents, or how many Oregon suicide decedents had recent protective order involvement. Every position in the current debate, whatever it claims, is an argument from anecdote.
The gap has fiscal weight. Emergency department visits, crisis stabilization, inpatient psychiatric care, and jail bed days all carry unit costs that OHA, the coordinated care organizations, and the counties already track. If order service is associated with changes in utilization for either party, those changes are budget items that are invisible today.
| Question | Available today | After the proposed analyses |
|---|---|---|
| Do health outcomes improve or deteriorate after order service, for petitioners and respondents? | No localized data | Measured, with each person as their own baseline |
| What does the post-service period cost the health system? | Unknown | Denominated in dollars from claims |
| What share of suicide decedents had a protective order served shortly before death? | Not tracked | Measured against population base rates |
III. The Proposed Measure
Service of a FAPA or stalking protective order is a dated, discrete event. Treating that date as an index point and examining health claims in windows before and after it shows whether service is associated with measurable changes in utilization and cost. This is a standard interrupted time series design. Each person serves as their own baseline, paired with a matched comparison group. It does not depend on self-report, credibility, or narrative; it depends on records that already exist.
IV. The Attached Claims Record: Scope and Limits
A PacificSource claims history is attached as a single illustrative case, showing that the proposed measure captures real, dated, costed events at the individual level. One case cannot establish a trend, and this statement makes no such claim.
The record spans June 2023 through May 2026, with order service in April 2024 as the index event. The ten months before service show 42 claims totaling $2,302 paid: routine pharmacy and medical care, with a single behavioral health claim of $415. The twenty-five months after show 205 claims totaling $27,013 paid, of which $20,916 is behavioral health, addictions, crisis stabilization, and peer support care that did not exist in the prior period. Whether that pattern generalizes is the question Phase One exists to answer.
→ jump to Exhibit A: the full claims record
V. Methodological Safeguards
- Association, not causation: Findings will be reported as association. Selection effects are expected and will be addressed through matched comparison and base rates. In particular, the same escalating conflict that produces an order may itself produce the deterioration that follows it. The design treats order service as a dated marker whose association is to be measured, not a mechanism to be assumed.
- Symmetry: Petitioners and respondents are measured under identical definitions. The analysis is built to reach a number, not a conclusion.
- Pre-registered analysis plan: Index definitions, outcome definitions, windows, and comparison group construction are specified before any linkage is run.
- Privacy: All linkage occurs inside OHA or a designated academic partner under data use agreements and IRB review. No private party touches protected data at any stage.
- Interpretive limits: The analysis cannot distinguish an order that protected someone from one that was misused. Interpretation belongs to OHA, its academic partner, and the stakeholder group.
VI. Two Linkage Analyses
Analysis One: claims linkage, measuring morbidity and cost. Using the date an order is served in Deschutes County as the index event, this compares pre-service and post-service windows against a matched comparison group, measuring behavioral health claims and their costs for petitioners and respondents.
Analysis Two: suicide linkage, measuring mortality. What share of Oregon suicide decedents had a FAPA or stalking order served in the months before death, and in what role? Vital records and violent death surveillance can be read against the base rate of order service. If losses appear among both petitioners and respondents, that pattern is itself a finding the state currently has no way to see.
VII. A Phased Request
Phase One: a fixed-cost, fixed-duration feasibility study confirming whether Deschutes County court records can be linked to Oregon Health Plan claims and vital records. It identifies the required data use agreements, the IRB pathway, and an academic partner (such as the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health), and produces a costed protocol for Phase Two. A small, reversible first decision.
Phase Two: the linkage analyses, undertaken only if Phase One confirms feasibility.
VIII. Independence, Disclosure, and Stakeholders
The author has direct lived experience with protective order service and its aftermath, and the attached claims record is the author's own, shared voluntarily. That experience is the origin of the question, not a substitute for the answer, which is why this statement proposes the analyses be commissioned and conducted entirely independent of the author.
Stakeholders should include the Deschutes County courts, the sheriff's office, the district attorney, victim services organizations, coordinated care organizations, and respondent-serving providers.
IX. Conclusion
Oregon operates its primary domestic violence intervention without an outcome measure. No health authority would accept that for a medication, a screening program, or a surgical procedure. The data to close the gap already sits in state hands, the design is standard, and the first step is small. Whatever the analyses find, Oregon ends with a baseline it has never had.