Is treatment outcome improved if patients match themselves to treatment options? Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background Research on matching patients to treatment has shown that matching grounded in expert views is little better than allocating patients by chance. Furthermore, there is growing emphasis on involving patients in their own treatment as a key to health behavior change. Research on the benefit of having patients choose their treatment from among options, in contrast to being assigned to a treatment by experts, has been limited. Consequently, we designed a rigorous test of patient self-matching to determine whether it does improve retention, adherence, and outcome in alcoholism treatment.