Polaris-CD
Outcomes assessment system to help treatment providers better manage care
Polaris-CD, an outcomes management system for substance abuse treatment providers, is designed to improve outcomes for patients, and lead to a more efficient use of resources and a reduction in dropout and relapse rates. The Polaris team has designed measures that explicitly support clinical decision-making and quality improvement for substance abuse treatment programs. This is the hallmark of an effective outcomes management system, and is what sets Polaris-CD apart from other systems.
This HIPAA-compliant solution helps treatment providers answer three key questions:
1-What services are most cost-effective for this patient?
2- Is his/her treatment “working”; i.e., is the patient’s progress satisfactory?
3- Is this person at high risk for dropout or relapse, and, if so, how can he/she be helped to maintain recovery?
Features & Capabilities
✔ Collects data in multiple life areas to better manage the course of treatment, identify possible obstacles to recovery and predict the risk of dropout.
✔ Matches patients to services, and allows providers to concurrently monitor a patient's progress during treatment.
✔ Incorporates more than a dozen questions that research has found to be predictive of dropout or relapse.
✔ Produces a real-time patient report and an aggregate, severity-adjusted program-level report.
✔ Clinically assess the need for interventions that are designed to reduce negative outcomes, such as Motivation Enhancement Therapy or Relapse Prevention.
✔ Scientifically sound—it is the only system of its kind with National Institute of Drug and Alcohol (NIDA) funding.
✔ Documents program effectiveness and outcomes for payers and accreditation organizations
✔ Includes the composite scales from the "gold standard" Addiction Severity Index (ASI), which produces scores indicating the severity of the patient’s problems relating to drug and alcohol use, family/social, psychological, medical, and employment.
✔ The update instrument includes questions about patient satisfaction, the number of services the patient has received in relation to various problem areas during the past two weeks and attitudes relating to relapse avoidance.
✔ Provides robust assessment of depression and anxiety for patients that screen positive for those conditions
✔ Highly customizable, and designed to meet the needs of a wide range of treatment organizations
Matching Patients to Services--Not Programs
Polaris-CD has an exceptionally strong research foundation, including a 5-year NIDA-sponsored research program conducted jointly by Polaris staff and the Treatment Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. The research team found that patients who receive treatment directed towards their specific problems experienced significantly more positive outcomes than similar patients, treated in the same programs by the same therapists, who were not matched to services. The "matching" procedure developed under this research has been incorporated into Polaris CD.
The clinically actionable data the system produces also helps providers identify persons who should be monitored post-treatment, and introduces the practice as a routine component of the treatment process as a way to improve compliance with post-discharge monitoring procedures.
