Efficacy of enhanced outreach counseling to reenroll high-risk drug users 1 year after discharge from treatment

Objective: Because discharged methadone maintenance patients represent a population at particularly high public health risk, the authors studied such patients 1 year after their discharge from a methadone program. Method: The locations of 94 of 110 discharged patients were successfully determined 1 year after discharge. Nine (10%) of these patients had died, 37 (39%) were already reenrolled in treatment, and 7 (7%) did not require treatment. The 41 remaining subjects were randomly assigned to either the enhanced outreach counseling condition (N=27) or a standard referral condition (N=14). Results: Within 2 weeks following this intervention, 17 (63%) of the 27 patients in the enhanced outreach counseling program and one (7%) of the 14 patients not in the program had reenrolled in treatment. Conclusions: These data suggest that enhanced outreach counseling may be an effective outreach strategy as well as a risk-reduction approach for discharged methadone maintenance patients.