Patient assessment and treatment planning are critical elements in contemporary alcoholism treatment. This technology-transfer project seeks to study and enhance these processes in standard community treatment programs - thereby improving patient retention and outcomes. There are two parts to the technology transfer: a computer-assisted ASI assessment to improve the identification and prioritization of patients' problems; and the Computer-Assisted System for Patient Assessment and Referrals (CASPAR) which provides a comprehensive listing of all free or low-cost health and social services (e.g. legal counsel, housing and job training) available in the community. This project builds upon an earlier, 3-year NIH-funded randomized trial of this computer-assisted patient assessment and care planning process in 10 substance abuse treatment programs. Data collection for that study was limited to a 1-month follow-up, but nonetheless showed that counselors readily learned to use these aides and that they produced significantly better treatment care plans and provided significantly better services-to-needs matching to their patients. This proposal replicates and extends that study to test the contribution of the CASPAR system over the computer-assisted ASI assessment alone in achieving improved care planning, better patient retention, increased services received over a longer time period, and better 3 and 6-month outcomes with an alcohol dependent population in a different geographical area. If successful, this low-cost, user-friendly technology enhancement could be an important addition to the meager clinical tools currently available to alcohol treatment providers.
