The Power of Protocols for
Sustaining SBIRT
National Council for Behavioral Health
Year Two Summit
Expansion and Sustainability Objectives
• SBIRT pilot interventions proven successful
• Practice culture ready to SBIRT to scale
• SBIRT adoption as a routine part of care across all of the
appropriate clinical areas
• Organizational infrastructure and capacity built to sustain
SBIRT practice
What We Know About Practice Adoption
and Sustainability
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Culture ready and willing
Leadership supportive
Workflow drives practice integration
Training and re-training essential
Data driven monitoring critical early and ongoing
Clinical decision support and reminder systems through EHR
key facilitator
• Guidelines or Protocols documenting procedures for all
aspects of practice mandatory
What are Practice Guidelines and
Operating Protocols?
• Practice Guidelines:
– Based on scientific evidence about SBIRT intervention – TIP, other
research studies
– Systematically developed into organizational policy that guides clinical
decision making
– Allows for measurement of the impact of care through written
definition of intervention
– Reduces variation in practice through effort to define standardization
of interventions
What are Practice Guidelines and
Operating Protocols?
• Operating Policies and Procedures:
– Provide standardization for essential operational activities within the
clinical practice
– Provide clarity on how to execute activities that are important to
practice and necessary for regulatory, reimbursement or other
accountability factors
– Define roles and responsibilities of team members
– Help assure execution of key activities when daily practice burden may
hinder implementation
– Transcends transitions in leadership and staff – written and approved
regardless of changes
Key SBIRT Guidelines and Protocols
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Clinical guideline or SBIRT implementation
Referral to treatment
Documentation through EHR
Quality improvement
On boarding of new staff
Competency-based evaluation
Clinical Guideline for SBIRT
Implementation
• Defines the clinical pathway or protocol for SBIRT practice
• Identifies policy for SBIRT:
– Target population for screening and intervention
– Screening frequency
– Purpose of intervention
• Defines screening instruments
• Defines positive and negative screening result interpretation
• Identifies roles and responsibilities of staff for all components
of the SBIRT process
• Establishes decision pathway for various patient presentations
to guide staff interventions
Group Discussion
• Describe your current SBIRT protocols or
guidelines
• How are you communicating those protocols
or guidelines for staff?
• Are there things you would like change about
your current protocol?
• What are your current challenges to the
development of sustainable protocol ?
Referral to Treatment
Referral to Treatment
The primary goals of referral to treatment (RT)are to
identify an appropriate treatment program and to facilitate
engagement of the patient in treatment.*
• RT can be a complex process involving coordination
across different types of services.
• It requires a proactive and collaborative effort between
SBIRT providers and those providing specialty treatment
to ensure that a patient, once referred, has access to
and engages in the appropriate level of care.
*Tap 33 Systems-Level Implementation of Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment
Referral to Treatment
• Defines process to facilitate hand-off from brief intervention to
steps required for successful referral to treatment
• Addresses roles and responsibilities of various staff
• Defines process for staff tasked with RT responsibility to refer or
assist patient in referrals:
– Identifies process for each type/category of treatment resource (public,
private, crisis, information-line)
– Provides guidance on referral options for different patient preferences
(MAT for opioid addicted, inpatient for complex patients)
– Provides detailed listing and profiles of different treatment resources
– Identifies protocol for follow-up by referring provider
– Defines documentation
• Provides a tool for assessing barriers to access requiring assistance
by the practice
Referral to Treatment: Considerations
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Availability of resources for treatment
Knowledge by staff on available resources
Relationships with treatment providers
Personalizing the process:
▫ Facilitate call to the treatment provider with patient
▫ Assure the appointment is made
▫ Assist with barriers to accessing treatment
▫ Avoid just handing patient “a piece of paper”
▫ Document referral source and date of appointment
▫ Follow-up and provide reminders –release of information to follow-up
• On-site availability or in system support optimal – develop systems for
personalized referral
Key Questions
• Are you able to track a referral to more formal substance use
treatment?
• How can the use of technology (EHRs, registries, CCD, NWIN
Direct) help facilitate the communication of information between
your organization and specialty providers?
• Are you notified if a client misses an referral appointment?
• What are your referral mechanisms and relationships?
• What services are provided through your network?
• What is your relationship with your referral providers? Are they
new partners or long standing ones?
• Is your treatment team aware of the services offered by your
partners?
• Do you have a access to different levels of care through your
provider networks?
Partnership development
• Start with providers in which you already have a
relationship
• Use areas of common interest and build on those areas
• Go slow
• Try out new service delivery process for a short period
of time and revisit.
• Introduce staff at your agency to referral partners.
Group Discussion
What are two concrete steps you could take to
improve your referral to treatment process?
What resources do you need to add to improve
your referral process?
Documentation through EHR
• Separate protocol/document helps practice understand the
following:
– Mechanics for modifications/customization of EHR to accommodate
tools for SBIRT
– Mechanics for future modifications/customization of EHR
– Contact information for outside vendors, as appropriate
– Data dictionary of operational terms used for coding and
documentation
– Copies of screen shots
– Process for use of the EHR screens for SBIRT documentation (access to
different screens required for SBIRT)
Quality Improvement
• SBIRT data collection should become incorporated
as a routine quality indicator
• Practices sustain ongoing SBIRT QI by:
– Identifying SBIRT measures for screening and brief intervention as part of
the practice’s overall QI plan approved by leadership
– Protocol developed and approved defining:
• Specific indicators and targets (i.e. all patients at every visit will receive a
screen – target 75% of patient encounters)
• Frequency of data collection
• Report format including data dictionary of all indicators
• Process for data abstraction from EHR
• Roles and responsibilities of staff for data abstraction, data monitoring, and
plan of correction
• Reporting of measures to medical, administrative and board governance
On Boarding of New Staff
• Sustaining SBIRT requires that all new staff receive the appropriate
training and support to conduct SBIRT
• Protocol must be established and reside within the Human Resources
department of the organization to address staff and medical provider on
boarding process
• Ideally SBIRT training should be identified in protocol for orientation of all
new staff and the on boarding of all new providers through a checklist or
database system, such as Health Stream that document that SBIRT training
occurred as part of new staff/provider orientation
• Use of in-person trainings or web-based training should be standardized as
the mode of training for new staff
• An SBIRT Coach identified within the organization is useful to help provide
ongoing coaching and support after initial training
• All of the above steps should be detailed in the appropriate new staff and
provider on boarding policy and procedure manuals of the organization
Competency-Based Evaluation
• In order to support quality and fidelity of SBIRT implementation,
the practice should define in a written protocol the mechanism for
regular competency-based evaluation of all staff involved in SBIRT:
– Competencies/skills to be evaluated for each component of SBIRT by the
appropriate staff member (i.e. assessment of screening broken down by
skills required for Medical Assistant evaluation)
– Frequency of competency-based evaluation (no less than annually)
– Mechanism for evaluation (standardized patient, role play for observation,
observation in practice, written test)
– Staff member responsible for conducting evaluation
– Minimum level of proficiency required
– Policy for staff that do not meet standard level of proficiency
– Documentation method- preferably incorporated into broader
competency-based evaluation instruments
Summary
• SBIRT practice adoption as a routine,
sustainable part of care is hard work!!!!
• Written protocols for key components of SBIRT implementation
ensure sustainability and quality:
– Prevents selective memory loss of how the team decided to implement
various aspects of SBIRT
– Withstands changes in key staff positions that hold institutional memory
of how SBIRT was implemented
– Integrates SBIRT as part of the overall organizational polices, procedures
and clinical guidelines that are approved by senior leadership, the
organization’s governing board and other regulatory bodies (JCAHO, etc)
– Assures standardization of critical components of SBIRT to reduce
variation in practice and promote higher quality of care
– Allows for changes over time in SBIRT implementation
Questions?????
Contact Info
Marla Oros, RN, MS
President
Mosaic Group
410-852-4263
moros@groupmosaic.com
Colleen Hosler, MS
Vice President
Mosaic Group
443-956-9618
chosler@groupmosaic.com
Aaron Williams, MA
The National Council for Behavioral Health
202-684-7457 ex.247
aaronw@thenationalcouncil.org