ASAM Criteria and ASAM CONTINUUM Research Bibliography and Slides

ASAM's criteria and ASAM CONTINUUM are the most intensively studied set of addiction placement criteria. Scientists began the crucial process of testing ASAM's criteria in the early 1990s to develop decision rules not simply through expert consensus, but through an international system of data gathering, quantitative analysis, and empirical feedback. Dozens of reports published in the peer-reviewed literature have been supported by over 7 million dollars of US government funding. Project funding came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. A considerable body of work exists to date on The ASAM Criteria including at least ten evaluations involving a total of 3,672 subjects. Several controlled studies have found that treatment based on The ASAM Criteria is associated with less morbidity, better client functioning, and more efficient service utilization than mismatched treatment. These results support the predictive validity and cost-effectiveness of the use of Patient Placement Criteria. They also indicate that the Patient Placement Criteria have valid clinical decision-making guidelines, good feasibility and reliability through standardized computer assessment instruments, and good concurrent validity in treating patients throughout the multidimensional assessments. Live testing of the ASAM CONTINUUM software occurred in three phases: predictive validity and alpha testing completed in Norway in 2011-2013; beta testing in routine treatment was conducted across Milwaukee County in 2013; a 2014 national demonstration phase followed this testing in twenty treatment systems throughout the US. In all three phases, the Software received high marks for: ease of use, a rapid learning curve, improvement in the clinical assessment process and faster and higher likelihood managed care reimbursement – with both public and commercial payers.

• Read a brief description and see the full research bibliography
• Download the research slide-set
• Purchase Chapter 27 of The ASAM Principles of Addiction Medicine to get a detailed overview of ASAM's criteria