Integration of databases and evaluation systems for intensive psychosocial drug addiction treatments

Over the last few years, Fundación Salud y Comunidad (FSC), in pursuit of continuous improvement, has devoted a great many resources to optimising the evaluation procedures for the intensive psychosocial treatments carried out in the various drug addiction care resources. 

Under the 2021 call of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Government of Spain (thanks to the European Next Generation EU funds), FSC received a grant that made it possible to set up a working team attached to the Research and Evaluation Department which, during 2022/2023, has been responsible for developing a new integrated and computerised evaluation system, which has been named I.D.E.A.S. (an acronym of the Spanish words for Information, Diagnosis, Evaluation, Care and Follow-up).  

This new evaluation system focuses not only on assessing the actions carried out during the care of service users, but also places special emphasis on both diagnosis and the evaluation of how the results obtained during the intervention evolve, always from a bio-psycho-social perspective.   

In the first phase, an exhaustive literature review was carried out, at both national and international level, in order to determine the variables most closely related to treatment and/or its outcomes (health, social, quality of life, drug use…). Likewise, a detailed review was made of the different validated instruments and evaluation systems available to monitor each of these variables.  

In the second phase, after selecting these variables and the evaluation tools that best suited the needs of the project, work was carried out on the design of the integrated data collection system, developed and adapted to three quality standards, ranging from the “High Quality Standard” (longer, but with more exhaustive information) to the “Minimum Quality Standard”, which is considered the minimum essential level for adequate evaluation and care. 

Lastly, the third phase of this project consisted of digitising the evaluation system designed in the previous phase. To this end, various usability tests of the system were carried out with a selection of centres in order to detect errors and correct system faults and/or make improvements, all with the aim of adapting the tools to the services, thus placing technology at the service of professionals and service users. 

Fortunately, this project has continued during 2023/2024 thanks to a new grant received in 2022 from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Government of Spain.  

This second period will begin with the design and implementation of a training programme for the professionals working in FSC’s various drug addiction care facilities. In this first phase both the proposed evaluation process itself and the use of the computerised tool designed for this purpose will be addressed, in order to minimise errors in its administration.  

After the training, in the second phase, this new computerised evaluation system will be implemented in all the participating resources, checking the suitability of the system through professional practice itself and thus verifying that it works properly when it comes to collecting information and facilitating care processes.  

 Finally, a third phase will consist of exporting the data and carrying out a preliminary analysis of them in order to obtain information on outcomes (and not only on the process), as well as their relationship with various prognostic factors, characteristics of the population served and interventions carried out, which should greatly facilitate the identification of good practices.  

Additionally, at a later stage, it is expected that other organisations will be able to adopt the system developed if they so wish, so that the potential beneficiary population would become everyone served by this type of service providing intensive psychosocial treatment (therapeutic communities, day centres, supported housing…).