Drug abuse treatment on demand in San Francisco: Preliminary findings

This article reports on a process and capacity evaluation of San Francisco' s Treatment on Demand Initiative. which was launched in 1997 to increase av ailability of publicly-funded substance abuse treatment. For the process ev aluation, data from public documents, interviews with community key informa nts, and newspaper articles were analyzed. For the capacity evaluation, bud get documents and admissions data for publicly-funded substance abuse treat ment in San Francisco for fiscal years 1995-1998 were analyzed. Results fro m the process evaluation document the development of the community-oriented Treatment on Demand Planning Council, and its efforts to not only expand t reatment, but to create a continuum of services to address the needs of San Francisco's richly diverse communities, to provide service enhancements, a nd to prioritize service needs. Process evaluation results also highlight t he complexities of implementing treatment on demand, including the difficul ty of opening new programs. Results from the capacity evaluation indicate t hat the San Francisco budget supporting publicly-funded treatment increased from $32 million to $45.2 million over four years. During the same period, the number of persons entering the system in a single year increased by 18 %, and the number of admissions in a single year increased by 15%. Implicat ions of these findings are discussed.