Reducing the treatment drop out rate in drug abuse programs.

Treatment dropout is to drug abuse programs as pain is to cancer. Despite the endemic nature of the premature termination phenomenon, we have successfully reduced patient attrition from 50% to 20%. This article describes our clinical and empirical exploration into the dropout process and presents the major administrative and clinical changes that reduced our dropout rate. Once staff decide that patient dropouts are a staff problem rather than a patient problem, effective intervention can begin.