Chapter 2

Trends in Facility Characteristics

Number of Facilities
Facility Operation
Primary Focus of Facility
Type of Care Offered
Facilities with Opioid Treatment Programs

This chapter presents trends in facility characteristics for 2006 to 2010.

Number of Facilities

Table 2.1. The total number of substance abuse treatment facilities remained relatively constant between 2006 and 2010, although there was considerable turnover from year to year in the individual facilities responding to the survey. Every year, between 89 and 90 percent of the facilities responding to a given survey had also responded to the previous year's survey. Some 11 to 12 percent of the facilities had closed or were no longer providing substance abuse treatment but were replaced by similar numbers of new facilities.

There was a net decrease of 174 facilities between 2009 and 2010, to 13,339 facilities. Of the facilities responding to the 2010 survey, 89 percent had also responded to the 2009 survey and 11 percent were new to the 2010 survey. Twelve percent of the facilities responding in 2009 had closed or were no longer providing substance abuse treatment in 2010.

Despite the year-to-year changes in the facilities reporting, several core structural characteristics of the substance abuse treatment system remained stable from 2006 to 2010.

Facility Operation

Table 2.2 and Figure 2. The operational structure of the substance abuse treatment system (i.e., the type of entity responsible for operating the facility) changed very little between 2006 and 2010.

• Private non-profit organizations operated 59 percent of all facilities in 2006, compared to 58 percent in 2010.
• Private for-profit organizations operated 28 percent of facilities in 2006, increasing slightly but steadily to 30 percent of facilities in 2010.
• Local, county, or community governments operated between 6 and 7 percent of facilities each year during the 5-year period.
• State governments operated about 3 percent of facilities each year.
• The Federal government operated 2 to 3 percent of facilities each year.⁶
• Tribal governments operated 1 percent of facilities each year.

Primary Focus of Facility

Table 2.2 and Figure 3. The primary focus of activity of the facility (i.e., the services the facility primarily provides) changed very little between 2006 and 2010.

• Facilities whose main focus was substance abuse treatment services made up between 61 and 62 percent of facilities during the period 2006 to 2010.
• Facilities with a primary focus of mental health services made up 6 to 8 percent of facilities each year.
• Facilities with a primary focus of general health care made up 1 to 2 percent of facilities each year.
• Facilities whose main focus was activities other than those listed above made up about 1 percent of facilities each year.

Type of Care Offered

Table 2.3 and Figure 4. The proportions of facilities offering the major types of care—outpatient, residential (non-hospital), and hospital inpatient—were stable between 2006 and 2010.

• Outpatient treatment was provided by 80 to 81 percent of facilities.
• Residential (non-hospital) treatment was provided by 26 to 28 percent of facilities.
• Hospital inpatient treatment was provided by 6 to 7 percent of facilities.
  

Facilities with Opioid Treatment Programs

Table 2.3 and Figure 4. Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs), certified by SAMHSA, provide medication-assisted therapy with methadone and/or buprenorphine, the only two opioid medications approved for the treatment of opioid addiction. OTPs can be associated with any type of care. They were provided by 8 to 9 percent of all facilities between 2006 and 2010.

To Chapter 2 Tables

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