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Data Sources

Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS)


Description
The Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) is a compilation of data on the demographic and substance abuse characteristics of admissions to substance abuse treatment. TEDS is designed to provide data on the number and characteristics of persons admitted to public and private substance abuse treatment programs receiving public funding in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), coordinates and manages collection of TEDS data from the States.

The TEDS system is made up of two major components, the Admissions Data Set and the Discharge Data Set. The TEDS Admissions Data Set is an established program that has been operational for some 15 years. It includes data on treatment admissions that are routinely collected by States to monitor their individual substance abuse treatment systems. The TEDS Discharge Data System is newer, with the first data reported in Year 2000. For both data sets, selected data items from the individual State data files are converted to a standardized format consistent across States. These standardized data constitute TEDS.

The TEDS Admissions Data Set consists of a Minimum Data Set collected by all States and a Supplemental Data Set collected by some States. The Minimum Data Set consists of 19 items that include demographic information; primary, secondary, and tertiary substances and their route of administration, frequency of use, and age at first use; source of referral to treatment; number of prior treatment episodes; and service type, including planned use of medication-assisted opioid therapy. The Supplemental Data Set includes 15 items that include psychiatric, social, and economic measures.

The TEDS Discharge Data Set was designed to enable TEDS to collect information on entire treatment episodes. States are asked to submit data for all discharges from substance abuse treatment. Discharge data, when linked to admissions data, represent treatment episodes that enable analyses of questions that cannot be answered with admissions data alone (e.g., the proportion of discharges that completed treatment and the average length of stay of treatment completers). Items on the discharge record include type of service at discharge, date of discharge and/or date of last contact, and reason for discharge or discontinuation of service.

For more information, please visit http://oas.samhsa.gov/dasis.htm.
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Limitations
  1. States continually review the quality of their data processing. When systematic errors are identified, States may revise or replace historical TEDS data files. While this system improves the dataset over time, reported historical statistics may change slightly from year to year.
  2. 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.
  3. The number and client mix of TEDS records depend, 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.
  4. Public funding constraints may direct States to selectively target special populations, for example, pregnant women or adolescents. The representations of these populations in the data may vary accordingly.
  5. 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.
  6. States vary in their reporting practices. For instance, drunk drivers who are referred to education or treatment are excluded from TEDS in all but a few States.
  7. 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 the data currently submitted do not permit following individual clients through a sequence of treatment episodes.
  8. TEDS attempts to enumerate treatment episodes by distinguishing the initial admission of a client from his/her subsequent transfer to a different service type (e.g., from residential treatment to outpatient) within a single continuous treatment episode. However, States differ greatly in their ability to identify transfers; some can distinguish transfers within providers but not across providers. Some admission records in fact may represent transfers, and therefore the number of admissions reported probably overestimates the number of treatment episodes. Only initial admissions are included in the public-use file.
For more information, please visit http://oas.samhsa.gov/dasis.htm.

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Calculating Length of Stay (LOS)
The length of stay in days was calculated for each record by subtracting the date of admission from the earlier of date of last contact (if available) or date of discharge. The median length of stay is reported here; that is, the number of days at which half of all clients had been discharged.
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TEDS for SSAs
 The SAMHSA Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS) TEDS site is provided as a resource for State Substance Abuse Agencies (SSAs) and others interested in TEDS. It includes the TEDS manuals for admissions and discharge data, crosswalk worksheets to match State data to the appropriate TEDS codes as well as the most recent crosswalks for each State, and information related to applying for a State Outcomes Measurement and Management System (SOMMS) subcontract to report National Outcome Measures (NOMs). Of more general interest, it has the most recent table of substance abuse treatment admissions by primary substance of abuse, according to gender, age group, race, and ethnicity for each State. These tables are updated quarterly. There are also links to a complete list of TEDS data reports and to TEDS public-use data files.
http://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/dasis2/teds.htm
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TEDS Publications
http://oas.samhsa.gov/dasis.htm
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TEDS Quick Statistics
The Quick Statistics site provides access to summaries of client admissions data in tables that show the primary substances of abuse, according to gender, age group, race, and ethnicity, for each State.
http://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/webt/NewMapv1.htm
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TEDS Data Files
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/SAMHDA/SERIES/00056.xml
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