The guidelines are intended for State agency personnel, staff of managed care programs, providers of drug treatment, other interested allied health professionals, criminal justice and other professionals, and third-party payers. The discussion notes that outcomes monitoring can help determine the effectiveness of treatment for different types of individuals, improve program performance, and document cost- effectiveness. In addition, the data derived from outcomes monitoring systems can be used to make resource allocations, justify funding requests, and provide data on outcomes to managed care systems. Individual sections discuss guiding principles, political and other factors in planning a successful OMS, ethical issues and outcomes-based accountability, methods of monitoring outcomes, the content of an OMS, legal issues in outcomes monitoring, OMS budget considerations, and uses for the results of outcomes monitoring. Checklists, forms, and appended program descriptions, background information, and list of 91 references