Substance Abuse and Mental Health Treatment

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Department of Public Health

Substance Abuse Treatment

This measure represents the unique number of clients accessing substance abuse treatment each month through the Department of Public Health's (DPH) Community Behavioral Health Services (CBHS). In this context, “unique” means that clients are being counted only once during the month, regardless of how many services they received.

CBHS operates under an Open Access policy and attempts to serve every client that seeks treatment. These clients may access substance abuse treatment services ranging from licensed and certified residential, day treatment, outpatient, methadone maintenance and detoxification. DPH and CBHS provides access to a comprehensive array of quality, culturally competent, and cost-effective alcohol and other drug treatment programs plus prevention, outreach and education programs.

NUMBER OF UNIQUE SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT CLIENTS

Mental Health Treatment

This measure provides the unique number of mental health clients in treatment through DPH’s mental health treatment programs managed by CBHS. In this context, “unique” means that clients are being counted only once during the month, regardless of how many services they received. This includes all modes of treatment for mental health disorders, with the top three diagnosis categories being mood disorders, schizophrenia/psychotic disorder, and anxiety disorder.

NUMBER OF UNIQUE MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT CLIENTS

How Performance is Measured

The unique substance abuse client count and unique mental health count are retrieved from the billing and clinical information system called Avatar. Avatar is refreshed on a nightly or weekly basis. However, it is necessary to wait at least three months after initial data capture before considering the data complete.

The numbers displayed on the scorecard page represents a fiscal year average of the values in the chart above for both substance abuse and mental health treatment.

Additional Information

Visit the Department of Public Health's Home Page.

Data

Vsit DataSF to access the scorecard data.