Empowering addiction treatment patients to engage in care may improve overall health
LINKAGE is innovative in its use of electronic health records and online patient portals to engage patients in health education and prevention and facilitate communication with their medical providers. "Patients with alcohol and other drug use disorders have high rates of medical and psychiatric conditions requiring complex treatment, but often rely on emergency services and seldom use preventive services, even when they have health insurance," said lead author Constance M. Weisner, DrPH, chief of Behavioral Health and Aging at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, and a professor at the UCSF Department of Psychiatry. "We know that patients who are more engaged with their health care tend to manage their condition better and our study found that alcohol and drug treatment patients are no different." The study, conducted at the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco outpatient addiction treatment clinic, enrolled 503 participants and assigned...