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National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) Substance Use Facilities Data
N-SSATS is an annual survey that collects data from all public and private facilities providing substance use treatment in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories and jurisdictions. The objectives of N-SSATS are to:
Collect multipurpose data that can be used to assist SAMHSA and state and local governments in assessing the nature and extent of services provided and in forecasting treatment resource requirements.
Update SAMHSA’s Inventory of Behavioral Health Services (I-BHS).
N-SSATS collects three types of information from facilities:
Characteristics of individual facilities, such as types of treatment provided and services offered (assessment, counseling, pharmacotherapies used, testing, transitional, and ancillary services), operation of the facility (public or private), special programs or groups provided for specific client types, client outreach, and payment options.
Client count information, such as counts of clients served by service type and number of beds designated for treatment (collected every other year).
General information such as licensure, certification, or accreditation and facility website availability.
Geographic Coverage: United States and jurisdictions
Data Types: Survey Data
Universe: Facilities across the United States and jurisdictions, including all active treatment facilities on SAMHSA’s I-BHS and additional facilities provided by state substance use agencies
N-SSATS is a component of SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Services Information System (BHSIS). The core of BHSIS is the I-BHS, a continuously updated, comprehensive listing of all known substance use treatment facilities and mental health treatment facilities.
Facilities in the I-BHS fall into two categories:
Treatment facilities approved by state substance use agencies (16,856 facilities in 2020): Most facilities in the I-BHS are licensed, certified, or otherwise approved by the state substance use agency to provide substance use treatment.
Treatment facilities not approved by state substance use agencies (3,070 facilities in 2020): Since the mid-1990s, SAMHSA has worked to make the I-BHS as comprehensive as possible by including treatment facilities that state substance use agencies, for a variety of reasons, do not fund, license, or certify.
As with any data collection effort, limitations must be taken into account when interpreting data from N-SSATS.
N-SSATS is a voluntary survey, and while it attempts to obtain responses from all known treatment facilities, some facilities do not respond. The data are not adjusted for facility nonresponse.
N-SSATS is a point-prevalence survey. Client counts reported do not represent annual totals. Rather, N-SSATS provides a “snapshot” of substance use treatment facilities and clients on an average day.
Multiple responses are allowed for certain variables (e.g., services provided and specialized programs). Tabulations of these variables include the total number of facilities reporting each response.
For methodological information for a particular year or date range, please check the codebook for a specific data set from the sidebar to the right.
Time period: 1997
Collection date: 1997-10/1998-03
Versions: 2014-04-25: This study update was done in order to remove the geographic variable County.
