Impact of increasing priority treatment populations on the treatment effectiveness among priority and nonpriority populations

The State of Illinois has had since 1990 a treatment priority population policy that requires Temporary Assistance for Needy Family recipients, Medicaid recipients, pregnant and parenting women, injecting drug users, and clients referred by the criminal justice system to receive treatment immediately or with only a minimal waiting period. However, the number of priority admissions has increased substantially over the last decade, especially for the criminal justice population at a rate more than double the rate of budget increases annually for State-supported treatment. Since the inception of the priority populations policy, there have been no formal evaluations of its effectiveness nor any systematic investigation of the extent to which the increasing volume of priority treatments influences the availability and quality of treatment for priority and nonpriority populations. Using approximately 450,000 patient treatment records collected by the Illinois Department of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Automated Reporting and Tracking Systems (DARTS) during a 12-year period, we have conducted a secondary data analysis to examine treatment quality and effectiveness among clients admitted to treatment facilities in Illinois from 1994–2005. Also examined are the effects of growth in priority populations on the quality and effectiveness of treatment systems across this 12-year period in general and for nonpriority populations in particular. Major treatment process and outcome variables include retention rate and abstinence rate at discharge. Study results based on multilevel longitudinal analyses will be discussed.