Quantum Units Education®

Administrative Issues in Outpatient Treatment

1. Strategic planning for outpatient substance abuse treatment programs include each of the following EXCEPT:

Financial Management

2. In order to reduce outpatient program costs, experts recommend eliminating noncore services that are not self-supporting after 12 months.

Overview of Staffing

3. Outpatient treatment staff should include psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, vocational coun­selors, family therapists, and medical staff, who are considered:  

4. Staff-to-client ratios of from 1-to-8 to 1-to-15 are common in outpatient treatment and factors to consider when establishing counselor caseloads include the type of care the program provides and the amount of work employees can accomplish, given their work schedules.

Clinical Competence

5. Which of the following is NOT one of areas that clinicians need to be knowledgeable about in order to perform diagnostic functions?

6. Clear documentation of client cases serves important clinical goals and is required by regu­latory and funding agencies, and all staff must adhere to professional responsibilities to protect client information.

Staff Supervision

7. Outpatient treatment program staff may include non-credentialed paraprofessionals, called therapeutic associates, who act as “temporary sponsors” for clients and work as co-therapists once they have been trained with regard to confidentiality and professional boundaries.

Preparing a Program to Treat Diverse Clients

8. In addition to ethnic and racial groups, cultural competence applies to gender, age, sexual identity and preference, spiritual beliefs, socioeconomic status, physical and mental capacities, and:

Six Stages of Cultural Competence

9. During Stage 4 of cultural competence, known as cultural proficiency, there is a belief that services need to be adapted to meet appropriate needs and that minority communities should consulted to provide advice.

Outpatient Treatment Financing Options and Strategies

10. Substance abuse treatment is financed through a mix of public and private sources with their own approval and reporting requirements, and may include block grants, Medicaid, Medicare, and other services.

Working in Today’s Managed Care Environment

11. Most Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) separate or carve out mental disor­ders from other health care services, and substance use disorders often are covered in a medical MCO.

Case Management

12. While case management focuses on the coordi­nation of an array of client services, ____________ management focuses on a single type of service.

13. When measuring program outcomes, client satisfaction data may help increase treatment engagement, attendance, retention, and abstinence by pointing to improve­ments that can be made by individual staff mem­bers and the facility as a whole.

Working with Staff on Performance and Outcomes Improvement

14. Performance outcomes may vary from clinic to clinic and from counselor to counselor, and for the same clinic and counselor over time, because more difficult clients will generally produce poorer outcomes, which is known as the cross-client effect.