Great Britain's National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) has officially adopted a new treatment-outcomes measurement tool that will be used nationwide, the National Health Service announced May 31.

The Treatment Outcome Protocol (TOP) is described as a quick and simple set of patient questions that will be used to determine the effectiveness of addiction treatment. The TOP will replace an evaluation system that relied only on "process and proxy" measures such as waiting times and length of treatment stays.

Treatment programs and primary-care doctors who work with addicted patients will be required to use the TOP survey beginning in mid-June; a full rollout is expected by October. Questions focus on topics like whether patients are using less drugs and have housing, jobs, or educational opportunities.

"The NTA and treatment services have successfully increased numbers in treatment, reduced waiting times and improved retention in treatment. It's now time to look at the wider picture and measure the things that have a direct impact on the health and social well-being of clients," said NTA CEO Paul Hayes.

"The TOP will help ensure treatment benefits clients and will lead to reduced crime and safer communities. The TOP will be a standardized tool across all drug treatment services, which will allow better monitoring of the true effectiveness of treatment programs rather than just carrying out a number-crunching exercise.

"Outcomes monitoring needs to be experienced as a genuinely useful tool in care planning, to let clients and their [case workers] get a clear and objective picture of progress through treatment. We need to engage service users, providers, general practitioners, and other clinicians in the process to monitor improvement."

The TOP was developed by researchers John Marsden and Michael Farrell.