Quality Measures Can Help Patients With Substance Use Disorder

More than 48 million people in the U.S. have a substance use disorder, but only a fraction of these individuals receive treatment that could help them on the path of recovery.

To close this gap and connect more people to lifesaving care, states need to collect and report data that provides a comprehensive picture of substance use treatment among residents—from diagnosis to recovery. Such data would help policymakers better identify where gaps in care exist, what treatment options are most effective, and where more interventions are needed.

Quality measures—which provide data to assess and compare the quality of health care delivery against recognized standards—are the best tools for collecting this information. Pew works to help states use measures that can capture this data and, more importantly, act on it to improve health outcomes and save lives.