COST-ANALYSIS OF TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES IN METHADONE TREATMENT

Despite the popular belief that vocational training is an important co mponent of methadone treatment, little information is available on the effectiveness and cost of various types of services. This paper prese nts a cost analysis of developing a training and employment program (T EP) at four methadone treatment programs in a quasi-experimental pilot study. We examine the cost of establishing and operating such program s as well as the marginal cost of a TEP component compared to standard treatment. For both standard and TEP-enhanced treatment, we also esti mate the average, fixed, and variable costs of these services and comp are differences across programs. Lastly, we examine the financing of s tandard methadone treatment to provide additional guidance to program directors and treatment administrators. Our main findings can be summa rized as follows. The average annual cost of TEP services in the pilot study was between $1,648 and $2,215 per ''serviced'' TEP client. The average annual cost per client for standard methadone treatment was be tween $3,546 and $5,104. And the marginal cost of providing TEP servic es to approximately 36 clients per site in the pilot study was between 3.5% and 7.2% of the total annual cost of standard methadone treatmen t. The cost methodology presented in this paper can be used in other r esearch projects and by treatment providers to generate consistent and comparable cost estimates of standard and enhanced substance abuse tr eatment programs.