An instrument for treatment progress and matching: the recovery attitude and treatment evaluator (RAATE)

Clinicians are under increasing pressure to contain costs and to justify their triage decisions and addiction treatment settings to third party payors. Treatment-effectiveness research points to the need for better patient/treatment matching decisions and systems of care. The Recovery Attitude and Treatment Evaluator (RAATE) is an instrument to develop a profile of the severity of the patient's illness. It is a clinically useful, chemical-dependency-specific, comprehensive but efficient instrument to help classify patients, define admission and utilization review criteria, match patients to the appropriate level of care, and measure treatment progress. The RAATE can be used by clinicians, health care managers and researchers in the chemical dependency treatment field, which lacks a common "language" for comparing patient populations, describing treatment progress, and communicating across disciplines.