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What is The ASAM Criteria?
ASAM CONTINUUM® is a comprehensive clinical support tool that enacts the logic of The ASAM Criteria – a collection of written objective guidelines that give clinicians and care managers a way to standardize treatment planning and determine where patients are placed in treatment, as well as how to provide continuing, integrated care and ongoing service planning and disease management. The criteria was developed by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), and presented in a book written by a group of renowned doctors and interdisciplinary professionals, working in a variety of mental health and addiction treatment fields. The ASAM Criteria has become the most widely used set of criteria in the United States for the treatment of substance-use issues, and it has been continually revised and updated over the years with the newest science in the field of addiction. Currently in its third edition (2013), The ASAM Criteria has been in use since 1991, and its foundations extend back even further into history.