[Five years of ROM in substance abuse treatment centres in the Netherlands]

Three substance abuse treatment centres set up a benchmarking project for routine outcome management (ROM) of structured cognitive behavioral treatments for outpatients with a substance use disorder.

To present the results of five years benchmarking.

All patients were included at intake and the follow-up assessment was performed by a call-center nine months later. Twice a year aggregated data were fed back to management and treatment teams.

Since 2005, clinical outcome data, including substance abuse data, have been collected for more than half of all 15.786 treated patients. At follow-up, nine months after intake, 23% was abstinent, 28% reported moderate substance use and 49% reported excessive substance use.

The Dutch centres for the treatment of substance abuse were successful in setting up ROM projects to monitor and compare the development and the effects of outpatient addiction treatments. The clinical results are acceptable and correspond to the results of the American project called match. It is not yet clear whether the biannual feedback of aggregated outcomes to management and treatment teams has contributed to the creation of learning organisations, but it has provided transparency and has made it possible for teams to learn from the outcomes.