For years alcohol and drug treatment advocates have tried to get hospitals and primary healthcare providers to screen all of their patients for alcohol and drug problems because it could lead to more people getting intervention and treatment, leading ultimately to lower healthcare costs for society. However, few healthcare providers do the screenings as part of their routine.A move is underway now to get hospitals to screen for addiction by including it as part of their accreditation standards.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has released for public comment a list of proposed new hospital performance measures that include screening, brief intervention, referral and treatment (SBIRT) of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use.
Huge Boost in Treatment Referrals
Proponents of the proposal believe it could be one of the most significant developments in the history of addiction treatment, creating a huge boost in the numbers of people referred to treatment. It is estimated that only 4% of hospital patient receive interventions for alcohol, tobacco or other drug use.
Since 2006, the American College of Surgeons has required the country's 100-plus Level 1 trauma centers to conduct screening, brief intervention, referral and treatment, but the program is rarely implemented in other hospitals.
Bob Curley of Join Together outlined the effort to include screening and brief intervention in the national quality and accreditation standards for hospitals in a recent news feature. If put into effect, the standards would require every hospital to adopt the same, evidence-based SBIRT measures.
Medicalizing Substance Abuse
Screen and brief intervention has been shown to be very effective in reducing or eliminating harmful drinking and drug use, thereby reducing future healthcare costs.
Proponents of the new accreditation standards hope that including tobacco in the mix with alcohol and drug use will help win over skeptics as the medical community begins to offer feedback on the proposal.
If the new accreditation standards are adopted, it could "do more to medicalize substance-abuse problems than all the urging and pleading we've undertaken for the past 25 to 30 years," Larry Gentilello, M.D., a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, told Join Together.
News Source:
Join Together "
Proposed Accreditation Standards Could Compel U.S. Hospitals to Screen Patients for Addictions." September 11, 2009
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Sir, have been to AA before and found out everybody is a alcoholic in the eyes of AA. They say the first sign is denial so they ask the question “are you an alcoholic and you say no then you are in denial and so are an alcoholic and of course if you say yes you are as well. So is the whole world alcoholic????
If your at the meeting for something that had to do with alcohol, then chances are, you may be an alcoholic. To be an alcoholic, alcohol has to cause a problem in your life one way or another, and could come in many forms. You could drink one time and be in an accident and hurt someone, and would be considered one because you didn’t control it.
If you don’t have alcoholic issues then why were you at a AA mtg.? And most /many who do have drinking problems are in denial………..and NO everyone is NOT an alcoholic. Sadly there are many among us.
It is confusing when you are first trying to sort out what is going on with your life. Generally people just don’t stroll into an AA meeting some incident or someone in our lives pointed us there because of some incident involving alcohol. You are the only one who can eventually answer that question but you have to look at your life completely honestly
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