Development of a "treatment program" descriptor: The addiction treatment inventory

This paper reviews the current literature on the definition and classificat ion of drug and alcohol; user treatment "programs," and provides a rational e for our approach to measuring the treatment programs in the Drug Evaluati on Network System (DENS). The DENS gathers extensive background and recent status data on patients' drug, alcohol, psychiatric, medical, employment, l egal, and family problems as they enter a sample of treatment programs thro ughout the country. The DENS recognized the need for descriptive informatio n on important structural, organizational, and service delivery aspects of the programs in which those patients were treated. To this end, we present our efforts thus far in characterizing and monitoring "service delivery uni ts" or "programs" that are sampled in the DENS system. Specifically, we pre sent development of the Addiction Treatment Inventory (ATI), a standardized measurement instrument to characterize these service delivery units and th eir services.