The demand for alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment greatly outweighs the available resources. Consequently, current healthcare funding models prioritize the volume of AOD service delivery over quality. Value-based healthcare which shifts focus onto the achievement of positive client AOD outcomes (value), relative to the resources and costs, provides a potential solution to these problems. The use of core outcome measures (COMs) to assess and provide feedback on treatment progress and improve the quality of healthcare is the cornerstone of this approach. However, relatively few efforts to implement COMs have succeeded due to the challenges involved. Those that have tend to collect data at service entry only, without any follow-up data or feedback to staff or clients.
This presentation describes how UQ has worked in partnership with Lives Lived Well (LLW) to identify a standard set of COMs and address individual, organizational and system barriers to their adoption. The novel UQ digital system which collects COM data directly from clients and automatically scores and provides feedback to both staff and clients will be described. Challenges and key learnings from the use of this system to collect COMs and deliver feedback to 20,263 LLW clients entering AOD treatment over 2 years will be discussed. The presentation will also describe how the NHMRC Meaningful Outcomes Centre for Research Excellence (MO-CRE) is using technology to increase the uptake and completion of COMF to develop more value-based models of healthcare in AOD services.
About the speaker
Professor Leanne Hides is the Lives Lived Well Chair in Alcohol, Drugs and Mental Health based at the University of Queensland. She is also the Deputy Director of the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (NCYSUR) and is the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Meaningful Outcomes in substance use treatment.
Leanne is a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience working on the interface of AOD clinical research and practice. Her translational research program co-designs, trials and implements innovative AOD treatments into clinical practice. Most of this research is conducted with industry partners. Professor Hides has been supported with research fellowships including an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship and ARC Future Fellowship. Her work has been supported by 15 NHMRC, 3 MRFF and 3 ARC grants, and she has 248 career publications, including 243 journal articles with over 10,000 citations.