Australian Treatment Outcomes Profile
The Australian Treatment Outcomes Profile (ATOP) is a brief, 22 item instrument that assesses various parameters of (a) substance use and (b) general health and wellbeing over the preceding 4 weeks. It is a patient reported outcome measure (PROM) and clinical risk screening tool, eliciting responses directly from clients and is designed to be incorporated into routine clinical care in Alcohol and other Drug (AoD) treatment settings. The ATOP is usually administered either face-to-face or by telephone by a clinician or researcher and requires minimal training for administration or interpretation. It typically takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.
The ATOP can be used for:
1. Conducting brief structured assessments, allowing an overview of key substance use, clinical risks and health conditions to be assessed in a brief interview;
2. Screening for a range of clinical risk conditions, such as injecting related blood borne virus risks, housing, violence and identifying potential concerns regarding child safety, overdose, mental and physical health problems;
3. Treatment care planning by identifying recent substance use, health and social conditions, which serves as a basis for identification of client goals, planned actions and desired outcomes; and reviewing the effectiveness of individual client care plans in achieving these goals over time;
4. Routinely monitoring client outcomes over time, enabled by standardised data collection and facilitating feedback to clients regarding changes over time;
5. Standardised communication between service providers, such as at multidisciplinary team reviews, case conferences and transfer of care activities; and
6. Service evaluation, quality improvement and research activities. Incorporation of the ATOP as part of routine clinical care provides a platform for better descriptors of client characteristics in services, program evaluation, comparison of similar services (e.g. benchmarking), quality improvement, clinical research and data linkage research approaches.
The ATOP is a validated clinical tool that is used in alcohol and other drug treatment, quality improvement, and research. If you would like to use the ATOP in your clinical service or research, please get in touch with the COQI team on SESLHD-COQI@health.nsw.gov.au. A copy of the tool can be found here.
The ATOP Manual 1 provides an overview of the applications of the tool, it's development and validation, and how to administer the ATOP. A copy of the manual can be found here.
Manual 2, Research and Service Evaluation focuses on the use of ATOP data to develop a better understanding of the profile of clients accessing treatment and their clinical outcomes. It will provide ideas on how to display, analyse and report ATOP data in a variety of ways. A copy of the manual 2 can be found here.
Please find ATOP training resources here