Italy's electronic health record system for opioid agonist treatment

Electronic health record systems (EHRs) play an increasingly important role in opioid agonist treatment. In Italy, an EHR called the Multi Functional Platform (MFP) is in use in 150 opioid-agonist treatment facilities in 8 of Italy's 23 regions. This report describes MFP and presents 2010 data from 65 sites that treated 8145 patients, of whom 72.3% were treated with methadone and 27.7% with buprenorphine. Patients treated with buprenorphine compared to methadone were more likely to be male (p < .01) and younger (p < .001). Methadone compared to buprenorphine patients had a higher percentage of opioid-positive urine tests (p < .001) and longer mean length of stay (p = .004). MFP has been implemented widely in Italy and has been able to track patient outcomes across treatment facilities. In the future, this EHR system can be used for performance improvement initiatives.