The Authors’ Own Words: Outpatient Continuing Care after Residential Substance Use Disorder Treatment in the U.S. Veterans Health Administration: Facilitators and Challenges

The Authors’ Own Words:

We ask authors to describe their impressions regarding the implications of their accepted work, how their findings will change practice, and what is noteworthy about the work.

Outpatient Continuing Care after Residential Substance Use Disorder Treatment in the U.S. Veterans Health Administration: Facilitators and Challenges

Anna D. Rubinsky, PhD, MS; Laura S. Ellerbe, MS; Shalini Gupta, MS; Tyler E. Phelps, MLIS, MS; Thomas Bowe, PhD; Jennifer L. Burden, PhD; & Alex H. S. Harris, PhD, MS

Substance Abuse Vol. 39, Iss. 3, 2018

“We found wide variation in rates of outpatient continuing care across VHA’s 97 residential SUD treatment programs, despite policy requirements for follow-up care within a week of discharge, suggesting substantial opportunity for quality improvement. These findings also suggest that administrative data-based metrics could be useful for monitoring SUD continuing care following residential treatment. Moreover, this study identified key facilitators of and barriers to SUD continuing care. The candidate “best practices” from high-performing programs could inform the design and testing of targeted quality improvement strategies to improve rates of SUD continuing care, particularly in low-performing programs that may be high-value targets for quality improvement.”