Clinician Perspectives on Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing e-Health Technology in Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Treatment Facilities.

Background: Substance use disorders (SUDs) in the United States cause many preventable deaths each year. Finding effective ways to manage SUDs is vital to improving outcomes for individuals seeking treatment. This has increased interest in using e-health technologies in behavioral healthcare settings. This research is part of a larger study evaluating the efficacy of the NIATx coaching intervention for implementing RISE Iowa, an e-health patient recovery app, in SUD treatment organizations and seeks to examine clinician perspectives of the barriers and facilitators to its implementation.
Method: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 clinicians from 9 different intervention sites involved in the study.
Results: Major barriers to implementing e-health technology include inability to access the technology, lack of time for both patients and clinicians, and a perceived lack of patient motivation to make changes. Facilitators to implementation include collaboration with other staff using e-health technology and integrating technology use into typical workflows.
Conclusions: Implementation of e-health technology in SUD treatment will require integrating the technology into clinical workflows and improving patient access to the technology.
Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interests: The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Todd Molfenter is a faculty member at CHESS. In addition to his academic affiliation, Dr. Molfenter has a less than .1% ownership with CHESS Health, the organization responsible for making the A-CHESS addiction recovery app commercially available to the public. Dr. Molfenter has worked extensively with his institution to manage any conflicts of interest. An external advisory board approved all survey instruments applied, and the individuals who will conduct the data collection and interpretation for this study will have no affiliation with CHESS Health. Also, parts of the NIATx organizational change model used in part of this trial were developed by the Center for Health Enhancement System Studies (CHESS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where Dr. Molfenter is a faculty member. Dr. Molfenter is also affiliated with the NIATx Foundation, the organization responsible for making the NIATx organizational change model available to the public. For this scenario, Dr. Molfenter also has an institutionally approved plan to manage potential conflicts of interest. The individuals who will conduct the data collection and interpretation for this study manuscript will have no affiliation with the NIATx Foundation. David Gustafson is a part-owner of CHESS Health, devoted to marketing information technologies to agencies that deliver addiction treatment. He is also on the board of directors of the not-for-profit NIATx Foundation, as well as a small consulting company doing business as David H. Gustafson and Associates. These relationships do not carry with them any restrictions on publication, and any associated intellectual property will be disclosed and processed according to his institution’s policies.
(© The Author(s) 2021.)