Treating Drug and Alcohol Abusers in the Same Facilities: Process and Implications

This paper describes the characteristics of separate and consolidated drug/alcohol clinics and evaluates the treatment of their clients. Consolidation refers to the existence of an explicit policy of treating alcoholics in drug abuse clinics; treatment refers both to the treatments made available to the clients and to the outcome of these treatments. The null hypothesis is that there is no difference in client level treatment process between separate and consolidated clinic level drug/alcohol treatment strategies. A total of 31,964 subjects from 267 drug abuse treatment facilities are studied by means of two way analysis of variance. The primary difference between separate and consolidated clinics is in the availability of services—clinics espousing a policy of treating both drug and alcohol subjects tend to offer a wider range of services than do clinics without such a policy. The data confirm the null hypothesis. Initial differences between the two types of clinics are explained by differences in characteristics—especially variations in the availability of services. The implications of these findings for administration and treatment are discussed.