Description & Citation--Study No. 24280

The Treatment Episode Data Set -- Admissions (TEDS-A) is an administrative data system providing descriptive information about the national flow of admissions to providers of substance abuse treatment. TEDS-A is part of a reporting system that was originally designed to provide annual data on the number and characteristics of persons admitted to public and private substance abuse treatment programs receiving public funding. The unit of analysis is treatment admissions. TEDS includes both Minimum Data Set (MDS) data (required reporting) and Supplemental Data Set (SuDS) data (optional reporting), as reported to state substance abuse agencies by the treatment programs.

Additional variables, such as calculated age and census region, are added to the state data. TEDS provides information on service setting, number of prior treatments, primary source of referral, employment status, whether methadone was prescribed in treatment, diagnosis codes, presence of psychiatric problems, living arrangements, source of income, health insurance, expected source of payment, substance(s) abused, route of administration, frequency of use, age at first use, pregnancy and veteran status, health insurance, and days waiting to enter treatment.

Substances abused include alcohol, cocaine and crack, marijuana and hashish, heroin, nonprescription methadone, other opiates and synthetics, PCP, hallucinogens, methamphetamine, other amphetamines, other stimulants, benzodiazepines, other tranquilizers, barbiturates, other sedatives or hypnotics, inhalants, over-the-counter medications, and other. Demographic variables cover age, race, gender, income, marital status, and education.

Created variables include total number of substances reported, intravenous drug use (IDU), and flags for any mention of specific substances.

The public-use files were created using the data that were current as of October 2008 (the October 6, 2008, extract).

Several limitations to the data exist and should be noted prior to using the TEDS files:

• The number and client mix of TEDS records depends, to some extent, on external factors, including the availability of public funds. In states with higher funding levels, a larger percentage of the substance-abusing population may be admitted to treatment, including the less severely impaired and the less economically disadvantaged.

• The primary, secondary, and tertiary substances of abuse reported to the TEDS are those substances that led to the treatment episode, and not necessarily a complete enumeration of all drugs used at the time of admission.

• The way an admission is defined may vary from state to state such that the absolute number of admissions is not a valid measure for comparing states.

• States continually review the quality of their data processing. As systematic errors are identified, revisions may be enacted in historical TEDS data files. While this system improves the dataset over time, reported historical statistics may change slightly from year to year.

• Public funding constraints may direct states to selectively target special populations, for example, pregnant women or adolescents.

• States vary in the extent to which coercion plays a role in referral to treatment. This variation derives from criminal justice practices and differing concentrations of abuser subpopulations.

• TEDS consists of treatment admissions, and therefore may include multiple admissions for the same client. Thus, any statistics derived from the data will represent admissions, not clients. It is possible for clients to have multiple initial admissions within a state and even within providers that have multiple treatment sites within the state. TEDS provides a national snapshot of what is seen at admission to treatment, but is currently not designed to follow individual clients through a sequence of treatment episodes.

• TEDS distinguishes between "transfer admissions" and "initial admissions." Transfer admissions include clients transferred for distinct services within an episode of treatment. Only initial admissions are included in the public-use file.

• Some states have no Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs) that provide medication-assisted therapy using methadone and/or buprenorphine. See the TEDS Crosswalks (link) for information regarding data collected by each state.

It should be noted that the categories and codes in this public-use file differ somewhat from those used by SAMHSA and those found in the TEDS Crosswalks and in other reports. This is a result of the recoding that was performed to protect client privacy in creating the public-use file.

To further protect respondent and provider privacy, all Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS) unique identification numbers have been removed from the public-use data. Therefore, no linkages are possible between the TEDS and National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) public-use files.

ICPSR created a series of TEDS state indicator variables that can be used in analyses to compare a particular state with all other states. These variables are only available for analysis or subsetting through the SAMHDA online analysis system. See the codebook for sample SPSS programming syntax on how to create state indicator variables on a downloaded file.

Users should consult the TEDS Crosswalks (link) for a breakdown of the data collected in each state and their corresponding TEDS codes, including state-by-state descriptions of exceptions or anomalies in reporting practices.

The data are collected from the states by Synectics for Management Decisions, Incorporated.

• DS1: Treatment Episode Data Set -- Admissions (TEDS-A), 2007