Automated monitoring of outcomes: application to treatment of drug abuse.
This paper suggests a new approach for lowering follow-up costs, improving the delivery of health care, and monitoring treatment outcomes. An automated telephone follow-up system that calls, identifies, and interviews clients is an alternative method for monitoring patients that may be both reliable and cost-effective. To test the viability of such a system, the authors monitored a patient population that has historically been shown to be difficult to follow: recovering drug users and alcoholics. Forty-two subjects were asked to call the computer and complete interviews on a weekly basis for five months. Clients answered 25 recorded questions by pressing the keys on their telephone pads. The computer automatically analyzed the clients' answers and estimated a probability of relapse for each client. In addition, the computer automatically called subjects who failed to complete interviews at the scheduled times. The study showed that self-reported data collected by a computer are as reliable as data obtained through a written questionnaire and that clients are more willing to respond to computer interviews than to mailed written questionnaires. This study also provides preliminary data on the predictive ability of a questionnaire for predicting relapse.
Alemi
F
F
Health Administration Program, Cleveland State University, OH 44115.
Stephens
R
R
Parran
T
T
Llorens
S
S
Bhatt
P
P
Ghadiri
A
A
Eisenstein
E
E
D000328:Adult; D003201:Computers; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012008:Recurrence; D015813:Substance Abuse Detection / Q000379:methods*; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*; D013689:Telephone; D016896:Treatment Outcome