Quality of care measures for the management of unhealthy alcohol use

Kimberly A Hepner; Katherine E Watkins; Carrie M Farmer; Lisa Rubenstein; Eric R Pedersen; Harold Alan Pincus

doi:10.1016/j.jsat.2016.11.006

Quality of care measures for the management of unhealthy alcohol use

J Subst Abuse Treat. 2017 May:76:11-17. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2016.11.006. Epub 2017 Jan 26.

Authors

Kimberly A Hepner¹, Katherine E Watkins², Carrie M Farmer³, Lisa Rubenstein⁴, Eric R Pedersen⁵, Harold Alan Pincus⁶

Affiliations

¹ RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
² RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
³ RAND Corporation, 4570 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
⁴ RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, USA; VA Greater Los Angeles at Sepulveda, 16111 Plummer St. (152), North Hills, CA 91343, USA; Department of Medicine and School of Public Health, UCLA, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
⁵ RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
⁶ RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 09, New York, NY 10032, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].

Abstract

There is a paucity of quality measures to assess the care for the range of unhealthy alcohol use, ranging from risky drinking to alcohol use disorders. Using a two-phase expert panel review process, we sought to develop an expanded set of quality of care measures for unhealthy alcohol use, focusing on outpatient care delivered in both primary care and specialty care settings. This process generated 25 candidate measures. Eight measures address screening and assessment, 11 address aspects of treatment, and six address follow-up. These quality measures represent high priority targets for future development, including creating detailed technical specifications and pilot testing them to evaluate their utility in terms of feasibility, reliability, and validity.

Keywords: Expert panel; Quality measures; Unhealthy alcohol use.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Alcohol Drinking
Alcohol-Related Disorders / therapy*
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Primary Health Care
Quality Assurance, Health Care / methods*
Reproducibility of Results
Risk-Taking
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

R01 AA019440/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/United States