Report Details Coordinating Care for Patients with Substance-use Disorders

BOSTON — The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation is releasing a new report, “Coordinating Care for Patients with Alcohol or Drug Use Disorders: Effective Practices and Common Barriers in Three Centers.”

In recent years, integrating treatment for mental-health and substance-use disorders (SUD) with primary care has been the subject of extensive research, testing a number of different integration models and specific interventions. While many of these approaches have shown promise in demonstrations or clinical trials, the true test of value is in real-world settings where there are competing demands on scarce resources, strict fidelity to intervention protocols is difficult, and patients have multiple urgent needs.

This report, prepared by a team led by Robin Clark and Deborah Gurewich of UMass Medical School, describes the process of providing integrated care for patients with SUD at three sites in Central Mass.: Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center, Family Health Center of Worcester, and Community Healthlink. It identifies common practices that improve care coordination for individuals with SUD and concludes with overarching key findings from the study.

Click here to read the report.