NIATx E-News (September 1 2004)

2 September 2004

Process Improvement

Volume 1, Issue 1

In This Issue
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A NIATx Story

It's 4 A.M. and in a crime-ridden neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware, Charles, a heroin addict, is curled up in his blankets in a doorway, clutching a baseball bat to protect himself and his wife who is sleeping beside him in an old lawn chair. People in passing cars think they see another couple of homeless people, but what they don't realize is they're witnessing the desperate state of America's drug treatment system. Charles isn't looking for a fix; in fact, he's doing what a man in Wilmington needs to do if he's serious about getting treatment for a drug addiction: he is staking out his spot at a treatment center whose waiting list is so long that people have taken to literally camping out in front of their door in hopes of getting in for treatment.

What is NIATx?
NIATx Principles
NIATx Aims
Process Improvement

NIATx Presentations

Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 2004
International Coalition for Addiction Studies Education (INCASE) 2004 Conference
Oklahoma City, OK
MORE INFORMATION

What is NIATx?
The Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx) is a partnership between The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Paths to Recovery program, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment's Strengthening Treatment Access and Retention (STAR) program, and a number of independent addiction treatment organizations. NIATx trains addiction treatment providers to make more efficient use of their capacity, and shares strategies and tools for improving access and retention with the addiction treatment field. READ MORE

NIATx Principles
Agencies working to improve processes of care find that organizational change, like individual change, is a challenging proposition. Extensive research on organizational change, however, has yielded a set of effective evidence-based practices. These practices, integrated into the NIATx model as the five Key Principles, can be used to guide any organization's improvement efforts. READ MORE...

NIATx Aims

The decision to focus on these four aims is based in large part on research of the Washington Circle, a multi-disciplinary group of providers, researchers, managed care representatives and public policy makers who developed and pilot tested a core set of performance measures for addiction treatment services. Access to and retention in treatment, their research shows, are the greatest predictors of successful recovery. Therefore, the four NIATx aims are ways providers can effectively measure their improvements in patient access to and retention in treatment. READ MORE...

What is Process Improvement?

According to Webster's dictionary, a process "is a series of actions, changes or functions that bring about an end result." In addiction treatment, the ultimate end-result is successful recovery. But there are many lesser processes, like the admission process, that are critical "stretches of road" in the road to recovery. READ MORE ...