Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #120981

Deborah W. Garnick, ScD¹, Mady Chalk, PhD², Constance M. Horgan, ScD¹, Margaret T. Lee, PhD¹, Frank McCorry, PhD³, and Sarah Wattenberg, MA². (1) Schneider Institute for Health Policy, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Mailstop 035, Waltham, MA 02454, 781-736-3840, garnick@brandeis.edu, (2) Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1 Choke Cherry Road, Rockville, MD 20857, (3) Clinical Services, NYSOASAS, 501 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10018-5903

The Washington Circle (WC) was founded in 1998 to develop performance measures for the delivery and management of AOD services. Until recently, the WC focused on measures applicable in commercial managed care plans, in large part because of the availability of standardized data and the potential for adoption by national accrediting organizations. But performance measures are also key public sector tools because States need to measure current performance, set targets, and make changes to meet goals for delivery of substance abuse services. Extending the WC measures to the public sector presents challenges because of different funding streams, public requirements to serve everyone in need, variable data collection approaches across States, and extensive Federal and State reporting requirements.

The presentation describes the three measures developed by the WC:

Identification: percent of adult enrollees with substance abuse diagnoses

Initiation: percent of adults with substance abuse diagnoses who begin treatment within 14 days of being diagnosed as having a need for substance abuse service or who begin treatment in a specialty hospital setting

Engagement: percent of adults with substance abuse diagnoses who receive two additional substance abuse services within 30 days of the initiation of care;

outlines areas of difference between commercial managed care and public sector applications including key players, measurement goals, data availability, consensus on concepts of performance measurement, and target populations; and describes ongoing collaborative efforts with ten States to revise the WC measures for public sector use and pilot test them using State data.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to demonstrate knowledge of what substance abuse performance measures have been developed for commercial managed care plans, and to identify a range of issues in adapting these measures for application in the public sector

Keywords: Substance Abuse Treatment, Performance Measures

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.