A practical system for monitoring the outcomes of substance use disorder patients

Moving beyond access: Towards a quality-orientated substance abuse treatment system in South Africa

“…Data can identify areas in treatment services that may benefit from change, measure change in service quality over time, and provide feedback on the success of interventions to improve service quality. 3,[8][9][10][11] For policy-makers, when standardised measures are used to collect data from all service providers, these measures can be used to compare the performance of treatment providers and benchmark service providers against a minimum standard. 3,9 This will help identify areas and strategies for system improvement and guide policy-makers and service planners in terms of where best to allocate scarce resources.…”

“…3,9 This will help identify areas and strategies for system improvement and guide policy-makers and service planners in terms of where best to allocate scarce resources. 8,10 Consumers can use information about programme performance to choose a suitable service provider, 9 and providers can use data to advocate for better funding based on evidence of the quality of their services. 9,11 Despite the potential benefits of collecting data on treatment service performance, South Africa has no data collection system suitable for this purpose.…”

“…In developing such a system for South Africa, we can learn from the systems used to monitor the quality of addiction and mental health services in other countries. [8][9][10][11] First, there must be agreement about the core data needed to make judgements about service quality. A broad range of stakeholders (treatment providers, policy-makers and service planners) should identify the main goals of the treatment system, key domains that address each of these goals and together constitute quality services, the core indicators within each domain that are feasible and important to measure, and measurement specifications for each selected indicator (known as service quality measures, SQMs).…”

The effectiveness of substance abuse treatment: development of a brief questionnaire

“…However, the practitioners need economical, rapid and clinical reliable methods to guide decision making in a short time period without compromising the patient attendance and participation in treatment. Complex or lengthy assessment measures may also lead to staff noncompliance 10 . On the other hand, the monitoring system can be burdensome for clinical staff in cases of large time-consuming intake, weekly and follow-up assessments, and can compromise the quality of data through a monitoring system 11 .…”

“…On the other hand, the monitoring system can be burdensome for clinical staff in cases of large time-consuming intake, weekly and follow-up assessments, and can compromise the quality of data through a monitoring system 11 . The solution appears to be the use of self-report questionnaires that took a short-time to be completed, not requiring the attendance of the staff member in training program, as in the case of interviews, and are well appropriate to systems of care 10 .…”