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Program Connecting Addiction Patients With Primary Care Improves Long-Term Outcomes
Implementation of an intervention to improve connections between addiction treatment patients and their primary care medical team produced a series of long-term benefits over 5 years, including more use of primary care services and fewer substance use-related emergency department visits, according to a recent follow-up study by researchers at Kaiser Permanente.
Findings were published this month in JAMA Network Open.
The LINKAGE trial was a study of more than 500 patients in a Kaiser Permanente outpatient addiction clinic between 2011 and 2013. The study compared outcomes between patients who received patient activation training and those who did not.
The training included 6 group sessions led by a behavioral health professional. Participants were provided with strategies for communicating with clinicians, using an electronic patient portal, and setting recovery- and health-related goals. Participants in the programs also had facilitated phone calls or email exchanges with their primary care provider.
Initial results of the program, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry in 2016, found positive short-term benefits, including higher online patient portal usage rates, increased substance use abstinence, and greater likelihood of talking with a primary care provider about substance use. A 5-year follow-up found patients who received the intervention were more likely to use primary care and less likely to visit an emergency department for a substance use-related issue.
“These patients have relatively high rates of early mortality and chronic illnesses and tend to use emergency care rather than preventive services,” study lead author Esti Iturralde, PhD, Kaiser Permanente research scientist, said in a news release. “This intervention was designed to help them better connect with primary care, to give them the skills and confidence to advocate for themselves in the healthcare system.”
Kaiser Permanente has begun offering the intervention to patients in its addiction medicine and recovery service programs in Northern California, Asma Asyyed, MD, the programs’ chair, said in the news release.
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