National benchmarking report on implementation of the medication assisted treatment (MAT) standards
- Published
- 17 June 2025 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an assessment of progress on implementation of the 10 medication assisted treatment (MAT) standards of care that were by published by the national Drug Deaths Taskforce in May 2021. The standards are intended to be used by ADPs for benchmarking improvements in specialist substance use treatment services. Progress is reported across all 29 Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) localities. It does not report directly on outcomes but recommends actions to address areas where service delivery may be able to improve from the perspective of people affected by substance use.
Main points
ADPs submitted three strands of evidence (across process, numerical and experiential components), which was scored to construct the red, amber, green, blue (RAGB) assessment, a composite illustration of progress against each of the standards. In this complex field of work, where there is a drive and a framework for continuous improvement, standards are not always directly comparable each subsequent year. For further information on RAGB scoring please see table 1. of the full report.
In 2024/25, for MAT standards 1–5, 91% have been assessed as fully implemented (RAGB blue or green). This is an increase from 90% in 2023/24, 66% in 2022/23 and 17% in 2021/22.
For MAT standards 6–10, 75% were assessed as RAGB green, 16% provisional green. This is an improvement from 2023/24 when 91% were provisional green.
Background
The Drug Deaths Taskforce published 10 standards of care for MAT in May 2021. This was followed by the Scottish Government's plan for the National Mission on Drugs (2022) and the National Strategy for Community Justice (2022).
Additional resources
We have produced a video to accompany the benchmarking report, which shares three perspectives on the integration of the charter of rights in the delivery of MAT standards. Alongside this is our MAT Standards interactive maps resource that shows the progress with implementation of the MAT standards, using the RAGB status, across all 29 ADP areas in Scotland. More information on Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) standards.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be June 2026.
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Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.