Assessing Substance Use Disorder Symptoms with a Checklist among Primary Care Patients with Opioid Use Disorder and/or Long-Term Opioid Treatment: An Observational Study

Background

Primary care (PC) offers an opportunity to treat opioid use disorders (OUD). The Substance Use Symptom Checklist (“Checklist”) can assess DSM-5 substance use disorder (SUD) symptoms in PC.

Objective

To test the psychometric properties of the Checklist among PC patients with OUD or long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) in Kaiser Permanente Washington (KPWA).

Design

Observational study using item response theory (IRT) and differential item functioning (DIF) analyses of measurement consistency across age, sex, race and ethnicity, and receipt of treatment.

Patients

Electronic health records (EHR) data were extracted for all adult PC patients visiting KPWA 3/1/15–8/30/2020 who had ≥ 1 Checklist documented and indication of either (a) clinically-recognized OUD (i.e., documented OUD diagnosis and/or OUD medication treatment) or (b) LTOT in the year prior to the checklist.

Main measure

The Checklist includes 11 items reflecting DSM-5 criteria for SUD. We described the prevalence of 2 SUD symptoms reported on the Checklist (consistent with mild-severe DSM-5 SUD). Analyses were conducted in the overall sample and in two subsamples (clinically-recognized OUD and LTOT only).

Key Results

Among 2007 eligible patients, 39.9% endorsed ≥ 2 SUD symptoms (74.3% in the clinically-recognized OUD subsample and 13.1% in LTOT subsample). IRT indicated that a unidimensional model for the 11 checklist items had excellent fit (comparative fit index = 0.998) with high item-level discrimination parameters for the overall sample and both subsamples. DIF across age, race and ethnicity, and treatment was observed for one item each, but had minimal impact on expected number of criteria (0–11) patients endorse.

Conclusions

The Substance Use Symptom Checklist measured SUD symptoms consistent with DSM-5 conceptualization (scaled, unidimensional) in patients with clinically-recognized OUD and LTOT and had similar measurement properties across demographic subgroups. The Checklist may support symptom assessment in patients with OUD and diagnosis in patients with LTOT.