Implementation Support for Contingency Management: Preferences of Opioid Treatment Program Leaders and Staff 

Abstract

Background: Contingency management (CM), a behavioral intervention that provides incentives for achieving treatment goals, has strong evidence for its effectiveness when combined with medication to treat opioid use disorder. Unfortunately, many front-line treatment providers do not utilize CM, likely due to contextual barriers that limit effective training and ongoing support for evidence-based practices. User-informed approaches offer a unique opportunity to adapt implementation strategies to support CM implementation. Methods: Leaders and treatment providers working in community-based opioid treatment programs (OTPs; N = 43) completed qualitative interviews inquiring about their preferences for implementation support (didactic training, performance feedback, and ongoing facilitation). Interviews were coded using a reflexive team approach to identify common a priori and emergent themes. Results: Leaders and providers expressed a preference for brief training that included case examples and research data, along with experiential learning strategies. They reported a desire for performance feedback from internal supervisors, patients, and clinical experts. Providers and leaders had mixed feelings about audio recording sessions but were open to the use of rating sheets to evaluate CM performance. Finally, participants desired both on-call and regularly scheduled ongoing facilitation to support their continued use of CM. Conclusions: This study provides an exemplar of a user-informed approach to adapt implementation support strategies for CM scale-up in community OTPs. Study findings highlight the need for user-informed approaches to training, performance feedback, and facilitation to support sustained CM use in this setting.