Inter-organizational collaboration in drug treatment and rehabilitation: A scoping review

Abstract

Background: 'Inter-organizational collaboration' and 'partnership' have been emphasized in drug treatment and rehabilitation over the decades. Nevertheless, the synthesis of knowledge of related arrangements has been limited in scope. This study fills a gap by systematically reviewing the features, outcomes, facilitators, and barriers of inter-organizational collaborations in drug rehabilitation to propose insights to improve policy and practice.

Methodology: This review is based on searches of MEDLINE, CINAHL Complete, Embase, and PsychINFO databases. All retrieved papers were independently screened and underwent quality assessment based on the protocol proposed by Peters et al. (2017). Data charting from the included sources was performed using NVivo.

Results: A total of 5,631 unique records were retrieved, of which 54 were included in the analysis. Most of the papers were published between 2011 and 2019, and primarily described, or tested, a collaborative activity from a case study or survey research. Treatment services were often partnered with public health, primary care, or social service organizations. The outcomes of initiatives were commonly about the increase in service utilization or the enhancement of service provision. Facilitators and barriers to collaboration were reported by two-thirds of the papers, which primarily pertained to contextual or organizational dimensions.

Conclusion: This piece of evidence provides good descriptive content on what, how, and how well the interorganizational collaborations have been conducted in drug treatment and rehabilitation. Implications for promoting good practices that range from University education, staff exchange, and incentives to support by governments are discussed.