ASAM Training

The ASAM Criteria

ASAM’s criteria, formerly known as the ASAM patient placement criteria, is the result of a collaboration that began in the 1980s to define one national set of criteria for providing outcome-oriented and results-based care in the treatment of addiction. Today the criteria have become the most widely used and comprehensive set of guidelines for placement, continued stay and transfer/discharge of patients with addiction and co-occurring conditions. ASAM’s criteria are required in over 30 states.

ASAM’s criteria is an indispensable resource that addiction medicine professionals rely on to provide a nomenclature for describing the continuum of addiction services.

How ASAM’s Criteria Works

ASAM’s treatment criteria provide separate placement criteria for adolescents and adults to create comprehensive and individualized treatment plans. Adolescent and adult treatment plans are developed through a multidimensional patient assessment over five broad levels of treatment that are based on the degree of direct medical management provided, the structure, safety and security provided and the intensity of treatment services provided.