Original Paper Development of an Electronic Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention Program for Hospital Outpatients With Unhealthy Alcohol Use

Background: Alcohol screening and brief intervention is recommended for widespread implementation in health care systems, but it is not used routinely in most countries for a variety of reasons. Electronic screening and brief intervention (e-SBI), in which patients complete a Web-based questionnaire and are provided with personalized feedback on their drinking, is a promising alternative to practitioner delivered intervention, but its efficacy in the hospital outpatient setting has not been established. Objective: The objective of our study was to establish the feasibility of conducting a full-scale randomized controlled trial to determine whether e-SBI reduces alcohol consumption in hospital outpatients with hazardous or harmful drinking. Methods: The study was conducted in the outpatient department of a large public hospital in Newcastle (population 540,000), Australia. Adults with appointments at a broad range of medical and surgical outpatient clinics were invited to complete an e-SBI program on a laptop, and to report their impressions via a short questionnaire. Follow-up assessments were conducted 2-8 weeks later by email and post. Results: We approached 172 outpatients and 108/172 (62.8%) agreed to participate. Of the 106 patients capable of self-administering the e-SBI, 7/106 (6.6%) did not complete it (3 due to technical problems and 4 because they were called for their appointment), 15/106 (14.2%) indicated that they had not consumed any alcohol in the past 12 months, 43/106 (40.6%) screened negative for unhealthy alcohol use (scored less than 5 on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test Consumptio