In 2012, the Recovery Orientated Drug Treatment Expert Group published its report, Medications in recovery: re-orientating drug dependence treatment. The report supports a radical ambition to place prescribing within a fully recovery-orientated system of care, with changes at system, service and individual levels. The report makes clear that this involves treatment services continuing to re-orient their delivery of care to provide active and visible support for recovery from the point of entry to treatment, during treatment and after exit, and that successful recovery also relies on support from others, including mutual aid, employment and housing services.

In the summer of 2013, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) asked for further advice from the expert group on:
• the frequency at which an individual receiving treatment for addiction should be reviewed (to determine the benefit of the treatment and thus whether alternative treatments should be tried)
• the structure of the review meetings (what should be considered, how to assess the benefit a patient is receiving, tools for decision making, etc)

The group responded to CMO in September 2013 and, following her review of their advice, she has agreed with the group that PHE should publish the advice for the benefit of the field.
The group’s advice makes clear that:
• care planning, with its ongoing and planned reviews of specific goals and actions, should be part of a phased and layered treatment programme
• a strategic review of the client’s recovery pathway will normally be necessary within three months (and no later than six months) of treatment entry, and will then usually be repeated at six-monthly intervals
• a strategic review should always revisit recovery goals and pathways (to support clients to move towards a drug-free lifestyle)
• drug treatment should be reviewed based on an assessment of improvement (or preservation of benefit) across the core domains of successful recovery.