Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Oct 25, 2021
Date Accepted: Mar 1, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
In-Person versus Telehealth Substance Use Treatment: An Ecologically Valid Comparison
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly transformed substance use disorder treatment in the United States. Use of telehealth services rapidly increased as a means to mitigate viral transmission of the disease. Emergency federal and state policies removed geographic and site-of-service restrictions and increased the number of telehealth services covered by insurers. Although telehealth has the ability to increase access to care, little is known about how the long-term treatment effectiveness of substance use disorder interventions delivered through digital technologies compares to in-person treatment. Even less is known about how patient, clinician, and clinical characteristics may predict treatment outcomes.
Objective:
To analyze treatment-related outcomes and explore patient predictors of treatment efficacy across traditional and telehealth settings in a sample of participants (n=3,642) who received intensive outpatient (IOP) substance use treatment from January 2020 to March 2021.
Methods:
The VIOP study is a prospective longitudinal cohort design that follows adult (18+ years) patients who discharged from intensive outpatient programmatic care for alcohol and substance use-related treatment at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation (HBFF) between January 2020 and March 2021. Data were collected at six time periods: baseline (at admission), 1-, 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-months post-discharge from both in-person and virtual IOP services through phone- and web-based administered surveys to assess recent substance use and general functioning across several domains.
Results:
Initial baseline descriptives were conducted on patient outcome measurements. Follow-up data collection is ongoing and expected to be completed in March of 2022.
Conclusions:
The findings aim to contribute to deepening our fields’ understanding of substance use disorder treatment efficacy across traditional and telehealth settings and its associated correlates and predictors of patient-centered outcomes. Results from this study will inform the effective development of data-driven benchmarks and protocols for routine outcomes data practices in these treatment settings. Clinical Trial: n/a
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