Developing a Standard Set of Outcome Measures for Addiction

From Maury Elsasser...

I hope this finds you well. As you know of my obsession with Outcome Measures and Value-based care as the future of sustainable affordable healthcare but most immediately a pathway to saving more lives in the opioid epidemic. I’ve been extremely lucky to have been a member of ICHOM’s Workgroup this past year developing a Standard Set of Outcome Measures for Addiction. Well, we need your feedback for our work thus far. I’ve copied the email below from our Research Fellow Dr. Nicola Black (she is brilliant) describing how to complete a short survey. Please pass this on to all contacts . I really appreciate it and all the work do. Thank you so much….Please continue to read and click the links.

What is this work about?

Understanding and measuring the outcomes that matter most to patients is essential for delivering value-based healthcare. To facilitate this, we have developed a proposal for a standard set of outcomes to assess following treatment for substance use and addictive behaviour disorders. Implementation of this standard set will better allow informed decision making, quality improvement, and reduced costs. We are now seeking feedback on this standard set from professionals in the field to improve this recommendation, which we hope will be a minimum global standard in clinical practice.

What are we asking?

We are seeking professionals to provide feedback on the proposed standard set of outcome measures via our 15-30 minute survey, by February 16, 2020. We are also seeking individuals to share this survey within their networks, either via forwarding this email, including information about the survey in any relevant newsletters, and/or retweeting it. We hope that this will be shared and completed as widely as possible, so every little bit helps.

Who can complete the survey?

We are seeking anyone with professional experience with substance use and/or addictive behaviour disorders (disorders related to alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, gambling, gaming, specifically). This includes researchers or educators, health or social care practitioners (e.g., clinicians, allied health professionals, social workers), government, policy or commissioning professionals, advocacy or charity professionals, commercial or industry representatives, and any other individuals with relevant professional experience. We are seeking professionals from any country. The survey is only available in English.

Why are we seeking feedback?

We hope that this standard set will become a minimum global standard. This can only be achieved if the set is truly fit-for-purpose in all settings. Through our working group, we have drawn on a diverse range of experiences of 26 experts in order to develop the current proposal. Now we want to expand this and draw on as many diverse perspectives as possible to ensure that we are validly and reliably capturing the outcomes that matter to people who seek treatment across all of the different populations and settings around the world.

Who is conducting this work?

This work is led by the International Consortium of Health Outcome Measurement (ICHOM). The project team consists of the project managers, Sophie Chung and Luz Fialho (ICHOM), the chair, Prof Michael Farrell (National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre), and the research fellow, Dr Nicola Black (National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre). All major decisions in the project have been made via consensus from an international, multidisciplinary group of 26 experts from 11 countries: Dr Apinun Aramrattana (Chiang Mai University), Prof Sawitri Assanangkornchai (Prince of Songkla University), Prof Alex Blaszczynski (University of Sydney), Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones (Imperial College London), Adrian Brown (Central and North West London Trust), Dr Qiana Brown (Rutgers University), Dr Linda Cottler (University of Florida), Maury Elsasser*, Dr Marica Ferri (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction), Dr Maria Florence (University of the Western Cape), Dr Ralitza Gueorguieva (Yale School of Public Health), Ryan Hampton*, Dr Suzie Hudson (Network of Alcohol and other Drugs Agencies), A/Prof Peter Kelly (University of Wollongong), Prof Nicholas Lintzeris (University of Sydney), Lyn Murphy*, Dr Abhijit Nadkarni (Sangath), Prof Joanne Neale (King’s College London), Prof Daniel Rosen (University of Pittsburgh), Dr Hans-Jürgen Rumpf (Universität zu Lübeck), Dr Brian Rush (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health), Gabriel Segal* (Alcoholics Anonymous), Dr Gillian Shorter (Ulster University), Prof Marta Torrens (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Prof Wim van den Brink (University of Amsterdam), Chris Wait* (Build on Belief). *Working group members with lived experience.