If you or a loved one has been struggling to find the appropriate addiction treatment, sorting through misinformation and sources you aren’t sure you can trust, you are not alone. There is currently little standardized information on the quality of addiction treatment facilities across the country. But Shatterproof is working to change that.

Over the past year, Shatterproof has been working to build ATLAS: a free public-facing website to help individuals with addiction and their family members locate high-quality addiction treatment. Monday, October 14th, marks a crucial step for the project as the team begins to gather data from approximately 2500 specialty addiction treatment facilities across six states. 

An overview of ATLAS 

Phase 1 of ATLAS is currently underway in six states across the country: Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and West Virginia. ATLAS will collect standardized information about services available and the use of industry-accepted best practices at all types of addiction treatment facilities and make this information available to the public. ATLAS is also designed to support addiction treatment providers’ quality improvement efforts by providing them with password-protected portals to access data, and by informing states’ and health insurers’ deployment of technical assistance resources and modification of payment and policies to support the use of best practices. Our aim is to empower patients to make informed decisions and align market forces to transform the addiction treatment sector. You can learn more about ATLAS here.  

What ATLAS data collection looks like 

All specialty addiction treatment facilities in participating states have been asked to respond to a survey on their facility’s services and clinical practices, and to invite patients and their loved ones to leave anonymous feedback on the facility via an online patient experience survey. In addition to the information provided by the treatment facilities and patient-reported information, ATLAS will also triangulate quality data using quality measures informed by health insurance claims data from both public (Medicaid) and private (commercial) health insurance plans. Data collection for ATLAS will continue over the coming months. We anticipate the public-facing ATLAS website will launch as early of May of 2020 to make these findings available to anyone in need.  

Opportunities for your input 

As data collection for ATLAS continues, Shatterproof is simultaneously reaching out to individuals and family members for their input on the design and content of the public-facing ATLAS website. Shatterproof is committed to ensuring that this tool is useful for those who need it most and reflects the input of Shatterproof supporters and the community at large. The ATLAS team will also be enlisting patient and family member support to help spread the word before the launch of ATLAS. Thus far, ATLAS has been developed with significant input from stakeholders across sectors, including addiction treatment providers, payers, and advocacy organizations, to inform the development and implementation of the initiative. As the project develops, we will continue to work with these partners to refine the approach.  

If you have more questions about ATLAS, or want to get involved with the project, we invite you to contact the ATLAS team at ATLAS@shatterproof.org.