Continuous quality improvement (CQI) has become an important component to health care delivery but has yet to be fully integrated into community based substance abuse treatment settings. To address this lag and improve the quality of substance abuse treatment delivery, we propose to pilot test a CQI intervention that was developed in collaboration with community based substance abuse treatment providers. In this study, we propose the following aims: 1) Conduct a randomized pilot study to assess the extent to which the CQI intervention leads to process and outcome improvements;2) Investigate the feasibility of CQI implementation by a) Measuring the process and extent of CQI implementation;b) Estimating the resources required to conduct CQI;c) Exploring CQI sustainability. This application is consistent with the goals of PA-09-105 """"""""Building System Capacity for Implementing Evidence-Based Practices in Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention"""""""" in that it seeks to support a pilot test and implementation evaluation of a CQI intervention in publicly funded substance abuse treatment settings. The project is designed to significantly advance NIDA's understanding of the capacity needed to put CQI into routine and sustained use in treatment delivery settings, which will lay the groundwork for subsequent implementation projects to disseminate these business practices more broadly.
Using a data-driven collaborative approach to managing service delivery may substantially impact addiction treatment quality. The proposed project sets out to pilot test a Continuous Quality Improvement approach in order to study its impact on addiction treatment processes and outcomes of care. Costs and the sustainability of the CQI approach will also be explored. The proposed project fulfills a critical knowledge gap by providing results about building addiction treatment organizational capacities to delivery high quality treatment.
