TEDS Frequently Asked Questions

TEDS is a national data system of admissions to and discharges from substance use treatment 
facilities that are licensed and funded and/or operated by Single State Agencies (SSAs). The data 
reported are a compilation of demographic, substance use, clinical, legal, and socioeconomic 
characteristics of all admissions and discharges.

Clients who were admitted into substance use treatment at facilities licensed and/or funded by SSAs should be included and reported in TEDS. Submit data from privately funded programs if available to the SSA. Clients who only had screening, assessment, or referral and wait-listed clients should be excluded from the reporting. Data should be reported for all clients in the reporting facilities and programs, regardless of individual client funding source—federal block grants, State General Funds, Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance, self-pay, or no charge.

TEDS records represent admission and discharge records rather than individual clients. A client 
may be admitted to and discharged from treatment more than once in a year, resulting in multiple 
admissions and discharge records in a single-year public-use files. 

Information on admissions to and discharges from substance use treatment are collected 
through state administrative systems and then reported to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health 
Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality 
(CBHSQ) by the SSAs in accordance with the reporting terms and conditions of the Behavioral 
Health Services Information System (BHSIS) Agreement funded by SAMHSA. Currently, TEDS 
data are reported by SSAs from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. 

SSAs are state entities with a primary responsibility of providing and facilitating publicly funded substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery services to children and adults with substance use disorders. The state role in submitting TEDS to SAMHSA is critical since TEDS is the only national data source on admissions to and discharges from substance use treatment.

 TEDS reflects SAMHSA’s interest in increasing correspondence to the behavioral health model 
within the healthcare reform. Several factors were taken into consideration in developing reporting 
specifications, such as measures and categories that continue to be important for SAMHSA, 
appropriate reporting of outcomes for substance use treatment clients, and state feedback on the 
feasibility and burden of reporting specific data elements. SAMHSA considered the reporting 
burden on states by limiting the required data elements to only the essential information for 
National Outcome Measures (NOMs) reporting, which serve as performance targets for substance 
use treatment services.

SAMHSA uses TEDS to enhance their understanding of publicly funded substance use treatment service systems. The data are used to examine these service systems over time, to inform decisions about SAMHSA’s use of its substance use block grant funds, to assess treatment outcomes for clients, and to better understand the technical assistance and support needs of substance use providers and the communities they serve.

No. All states and territories must submit their data to fulfill reporting requirements under the terms and conditions of the SAMHSA funded Behavioral Health Services Information System (BHSIS) Agreements and the Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant (SUPTRS BG) data reporting requirements as mandated by Title XIX, Part B, Subpart III of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. §300x–52(a)).

Failure to comply with these requirements may lead to enforcement actions including 
suspension or reduction of block grant payments, as stipulated in 42 U.S.C. 300x-55.

The TEDS is comprised of two major components: an admission file and a discharge file. Both 
files collect information on demographic, substance use, mental health, clinical, legal, and 
socioeconomic characteristics of persons who were admitted to substance use treatment. Many of 
the substance use and substance use treatment characteristics as well as data fields designated as 
NOMs are collected both at admission and at discharge to assess change.

Monthly or quarterly reporting at minimum is strongly recommended. Submitting files more 
often will help ease the burden of reporting very large data files and will allow for more timely 
detection and resolution of data problems. SSAs can also submit additional TEDS records with 
admission dates in the past approximately 10 years at any time. The TEDS database will be updated 
accordingly. 

SAMHSA “freezes” the TEDS database on or about October 15. This frozen database file is 
used to produce annual reports and public-use files every year. For example, the file that will be 
frozen as of October 15, 2025, will be used to produce the 2024 TEDS annual report, 2024 public
use files, and other ad hoc reports during the year. Data received after the October 15, 2025, cut
off date will not be included in the mentioned products. Public-use files are annually updated, 
incorporating data submitted after the October 15 cut-off date. 

Requests for extensions are not encouraged or always granted. Since the preparation of data for 
the annual report and public-use files cannot begin until states have completed their data 
submission for that year, late submission and/or incomplete submission may delay their 
publications. CBHSQ must balance the timeliness of publications and the completeness of the 
dataset in producing these dissemination products. If a state does not submit complete data for the 
reporting year, the state risks not being included in these products. 

 On April 30, 2025, the BHSIS Project Office plans to archive TEDS 2000–2014 admission and 
discharge records. Effective May 1, 2025, the BHSIS program will only accept TEDS substance 
use admission and discharge records with a date of admission of January 1, 2015, or later. The 
next archiving is planned for 2030. Please contact the BHSIS Project Office if corrections to 
archived records need to be made.

A client may receive a separate admission record for every billable service (e.g., group therapy, individual therapy, etc.). If these services were delivered within the same treatment episode (e.g., short term rehabilitation/residential), report only one of these records to TEDS. TEDS does not collect data on the individual services delivered.

The same record should be submitted to both MH-TEDS and TEDS to avoid undercounting 
clients in either of the systems.

SSAs submit TEDS admissions and discharges data through the TEDS Data Submission 
System (TEDS DSS). The TEDS DSS is a web-based data preparation and submission system 
designed to provide an interactive and transparent data submission process. These functionalities, 
along with the overall intuitive design of the TEDS DSS, provide states and territories with easier 
access to and the means to comply with TEDS reporting requirements.

Behavioral Health Services Information System (BHSIS) Project Office provides technical assistance to the states and territories to prepare the data for submission through conference calls, webinars, virtual board group discussions, and other related activities as needed.

States are highly encouraged to reach out to the BHSIS Project Office for any technical assistance they need for data reporting. They can call the BHSIS office toll-free at 1-833-888-1553 (Mon-Fri 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. ET) or email BHSIS@samhsa.hhs.gov.

SAMHSA uses TEDS to enhance their understanding of publicly funded substance use treatment service systems. The data are used to examine these service systems over time; to inform decisions about SAMHSA’s use of its substance use block grant funds; to assess outcomes of treatment for clients; and to better understand the technical assistance and support needs of substance use providers and the communities they serve.

SUPTRS BG is a fund provided to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, five territories (the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, and Guam), three Freely Associated States (FAS—the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau), and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians to help plan, implement, and evaluate activities that prevent and treat substance use. The targeted populations of the SUPTRS BG are pregnant women, women with dependent children, and people who inject drugs. The service areas include tuberculosis services, early intervention services for HIV/AIDS, and primary prevention services.

The SUPTRS BG is authorized by section 1921 of Title XIX, Part B, Subpart II and III of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act. The PHS Act required the secretary of the HHS to create regulations as a precondition to making funds available to the states and other grantees under the SUPTRS. Title 45 Code of Federal Regulations Part 96 was published on March 31, 1993, and the Tobacco Regulations for Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant; Final Rule, 61 Federal Register 1492 was published on January 19, 1996. SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s (CSAT) State Systems Partnership Branch (SSPB), in collaboration with the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s (CSAP) Division of Primary Prevention (DPP), administers the SUPTRS BG.

TEDS data are used to populate Tables 14-20 in the federal SUPTRS BG annual report. These tables comprise SAMHSA’s National Outcome Measures (NOMs) and include:

However, it is important to note that while the data from TEDS are used to populate SUPTRS BG  application tables, clients that need to be reported are not restricted to those whose services are  funded by SUPTRS BG. Furthermore, the following clients are further excluded from tables in the  SUPTRS BG application: 

• Clients receiving medications for opioid use disorder, with the exception of the retention 
  table.
• Clients who received treatment in short-term settings where no change would be expected to occur between admission and discharge (i.e., withdrawal management), with the exception of the retention table.
• Clients whose treatment was terminated by death and/or incarceration.
• Records that do not have valid values at both admission and discharge in the applicable TEDS data fields.

APPENDIX F SUPTRS REPORT TABLES should assist states in understanding SAMHSA’s coding requirements. If you have any questions or need additional information on how the TEDS records are used to populate the SUPTRS BG application tables, please contact the BHSIS Project Office at BHSIS@samhsa.hhs.gov.

SUPTRS BG Tables 14-20 are based on admission and discharge data reported by the states for the most recently completed calendar year (CY) for which TEDS is available. The BHSIS Project Office supplies three iterations of calendar year data to SAMHSA through its WebBGAS contractor. For example, the cut-off dates for TEDS CY 2024 data inclusion in the SUPTRS BG fiscal year 2026 application tables are April 30, 2025; November 30, 2025; and January 31, 2026. Data not received by the first two cut-off date will appear in the next iteration of the application tables. Data not received by the last cut-off date will not be accounted for in the state’s SUPTRS BG annual report to SAMHSA. Therefore, the state should ensure that all TEDS admission and discharge data corresponding to the CY should be submitted by January 31, 2026.

Public-use files (PUFs) are available to the general public in SAS, SPSS, Stata, R, and ASCII comma-delimited formats. To download TEDS PUFs and codebooks, visit https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/teds/datafiles. TEDS-A contains all admission records with the admission date of a given year. TEDS-D contains both admission and discharge records that were linked with the discharge date of a given year.

Both TEDS-A and TEDS-D have age, sex, race, and ethnicity as required data fields and marital 
status and veteran status as optional data fields. 

TEDS allows up to three substances to be listed on the admission and discharge record, respectively, as a primary, secondary, and tertiary substance. These represent the substances that led to the admission to treatment; however, they do not necessarily account for all drugs used at the time of admission. TEDS collects data for the following substances along with the route of administration, frequency of use, age at first use, and detailed drug code: Alcohol, Cocaine, Marijuana/Hashish, Heroin, Non-Prescription Methadone, Other Opiates and Synthetics, PCP, Hallucinogens, Methamphetamine/Speed, Other Amphetamines, Other Stimulants, Benzodiazepines, Other non-Benzodiazepine, Other Tranquilizers, Barbiturates, Other Sedatives or Hypnotics, Inhalants, Over-the-Counter drugs, and Other drugs.

No, TEDS data do not represent the national demand for substance use treatment services or describe the substance use status of the national population. TEDS represents admission to and discharge from treatment of clients at facilities licensed and funded and/or operated by SSAs.

State-to-state comparisons should be made with extreme caution due to differences in state 
licensure practices, disbursement of public funds, state data systems, and data collection practices 
and methodologies. Additional information outlining state reporting characteristics is included in 
Appendix C of the Annual Report.

While SSAs are required to submit data from all eligible facilities, some states’ data would not 
be included in the TEDS reports for a given year if the submitted data counts are less than 50% of 
the prior 3-year average. 

No. An important feature of TEDS reporting is its use of non-protected health information (non
PHI). No personally identifiable information, or PII, as defined under the Health Insurance 
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rule for PHI, is reported in the data files. The data 
files use a unique, non-PHI ID for reporting the required and optional information.