ARC Associates

N-SSATS - National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services

The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) is designed to collect information from all facilities in the United States, both public and private, that provide substance abuse treatment. N-SSATS provides the mechanism for quantifying the dynamic character and composition of the United States substance abuse treatment delivery system. The objectives of N-SSATS are to collect multipurpose data that can be used to assist the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and state and local governments in assessing the nature and extent of services provided and in forecasting treatment resource requirements, to update SAMHSA's Inventory of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (I-SATS), to analyze general treatment services trends, and to generate the National Directory of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment Programs and its online equivalent, the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility Locator.

Data are collected on topics including ownership, services offered (assessment and pre-treatment, pharmacotherapies, testing, transitional, ancillary), detoxification, primary focus (substance abuse, mental health, both, general health, and other), hotline operation, methadone/buprenorphine/LAAM dispensing, counseling and therapeutic approaches, languages in which treatment is provided, type of treatment provided, number of clients (total and under age 18), number of beds, types of payment accepted, sliding fee scale, special programs offered, facility accreditation and licensure/certification, and managed care agreements.

N-SSATS is a point-prevalence survey. It provides information on the substance abuse treatment system and its clients on the reference date. Client counts do not represent annual totals. Rather, N-SSATS provides a "snapshot" of substance abuse treatment facilities and clients on an average day. N-SSATS collects data about facilities, not individual clients. Data on clients represent an aggregate of clients in treatment for each reporting facility.

Note that client counts and certain other data collected by N-SSATS is not publicly available at the provider level since such data may be considered proprietary information by some providers. 

Reports and Documentation

• 2013 N-SSATS Questionnaire (DRAFT)
  
• 2011 N-SSATS Questionnaire
• 2011 N-SSATS Questionnaire for Opioid Tx Programs
  
• SAMHSA Treatment Locator Web Page
  
• 2011 N-SSATS Report: Data on Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities
  
• 2010 N-SSATS State Profile - LOUISIANA
  
• 2010 N-SSATS State Profile - MISSISSIPPI
  
• 2010 N-SSATS State Profile - New York
  
• N-SSATS Documentation and Reports Web Site
• N-SSATS Online Analysis Web Site
  
• 2011 N-SSATS Codebook (for data analysis) 
  

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