Matching substance abuse patients to appropriate treatments: a conceptual and methodological approach

The paper describes a non-intrusive, computer assisted, program evaluation design for matching sub-types of substance abuse patients to appropriate treatment programs in any multi-modal treatment network. The design incorporates the methodological advantages of an experimental paradigm without the administrative and clinical problems of random patient assignment, and untreated control groups. The specific objectives of this design are: (1) The development of a generalizable evaluation process to efficiently match patients with programs. (2) An overall increase in treatment success through improvement of treatment assignment procedures. (3) A general improvement in cost-effectiveness through reductions in patient drop-out, recidivism, and treatment overlap.