Identifying United States Substance Abuse Treatment Programs

Abstract

An accurate national listing of substance abuse treatment programs is essential for reporting data about the nation's treatment system and the clients entering that system. The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (NSSATS) is thought to provide the most comprehensive list of treatment providers. Therefore, we report a partial test of the concurrent validity of the NSSATS in a single mid-sized city. Using operational definitions of "substance abuse treatment" and "substance abuse treatment programs" derived from prior work by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment; and working within the defined geographic boundaries of a single, mid-sized city, we compared the NSSATS list with an independently developed compilation of programs from 5 sources: (1) the Yellow Pages; (2) the Internet Infospace Directory; (3) a State directory of licensed substance abuse treatment services; (4) the Office of Applied Studies Directory; (5) the National Master Facility Inventory. With all sources, including NSSATS, we identified 96 separate listings that met the operational definition of adult treatment within the geographic bounds of the city. The NSSATS identified 70 of those 96 programs (73%), the 5-source compilation identified a sample of 83 (86%). While these findings from a single city cannot be considered a full test of the validity of the NSSATS, the data presented offer at least one partial but promising indication that the NSSATS may be a valid national listing and may serve as satisfactory national frame.

Role of family in alcohol and substance abuse

“…The literature on abuse is rich in family‐focused approaches in alcoholism. However, findings indicating that family systems in substance abuse have aspects parallel to those of alcoholism are increasing in the course of time 47,48 . Therefore, many of the treatment approaches involving families of alcoholics may also be applied to families of substance abusers.…”

State policies matter: The case of outpatient drug treatment program practices

“…What tools or diagnostic criteria may or may not be employed by the treatment programs based on state requirements for use of these tools are unknown and provide an interesting question for future research. Fifth, although N-SSATS has been reported elsewhere as being a suitable source of treatment service data (Carise et al, 2005), responses to the survey are voluntary and, therefore, subject to response bias, including varying levels of knowledge, expertise, or both on the part of the respondents to the N-SSATS questionnaire. Furthermore, responses to the N-SSATS service variables are often reported in the affirmative even if only one client of a given service provider has received the given service.…”

“…The N-SSATS reference date is March 31 of each year. Although not considered a census of substance abuse treatment programs in the United States, N-SSATS has been determined to provide a satisfactory national sampling frame for substance abuse treatment services, having accurately identified 70% of all substance abuse facilities in a midsize city (Carise, McLellan, Festinger, & Kleber, 2005).…”

Does State Certification or Licensure Influence Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment Program Practices?

“…A recent study documented that N-SSATS correctly identified 70% of all substance abuse facilities in a midsize city and that it serves as a satisfactory national frame for studies on substance abuse treatment services. 25 N-SSATS collects data from facilities using mailed questionnaires, telephone interviews or web-based online surveys, and has achieved a 95% response rate. 8 As indicated in Table 1, 22 N-SSATS variables were utilized as dependent variables for this study.…”

“…Third, as noted previously, N-SSATS cannot be understood to provide a census of treatment programs; however, the data appear to be fairly representative of the treatment programs within the states. 25 Fourth, it was not possible, given available data sources, to control for all possible factors that may confound the relationship between state substance abuse treatment program authorization type and treatment program practices. One such variable, state-level treatment program expenditures, may be important in understanding the role that the broader policy environment or context may play in effecting the delivery of treatment services.…”