Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2015–16

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Release Date: 28 Jun 2017

Topic: Alcohol & other drug treatment services

Media release

AIHW

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2017) Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2015–16, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed 11 September 2024.

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Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2017). Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2015–16. Canberra: AIHW.

MLA

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2015–16. AIHW, 2017.

Vancouver

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2015–16. Canberra: AIHW; 2017.

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Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2017, Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2015–16, AIHW, Canberra.

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In 2015–16, about 796 alcohol and other drug treatment services provided just over 206,600 treatment episodes to an estimated 134,000 clients. The top 4 drugs that led clients to seek treatment were alcohol (32% of treatment episodes), cannabis (23%), amphetamines (23%), and heroin (6%). The proportion of episodes where clients were receiving treatment for amphetamines has continued to rise over the 5 years to 2015–16, from 12% of treatment episodes in 2011–12 to 23% in 2015–16. The median age of clients in AOD treatment services is rising, from 31 in 2006–07 to 33 in 2015–16.

ISSN: 2205-5088 (PDF) 1447-6746 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-76054-142-2
Cat. no: HSE 187
Pages: 85

Findings from this report:

An estimated 133,895 clients received just over 206,000 treatment episodes from alcohol & other drug treatment agencies
A total of 796 publicly-funded alcohol and other drug treatment agencies provided services to clients
Around 1 in 7 AOD clients (14%) were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
The principal drugs that led clients to seek treatment were alcohol, amphetamines, cannabis and heroin

Technical notes

Data source: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander health organisations: AOD treatment services

28 Jun 2017

In relation to substance-use issues, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary health-care services provide:

health care, including extended care roles (for example, diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease, 24-hour emergency care, dental/hearing/optometry services)
preventive health care (for example, health screening for children and adults),
health-related community support (for example, school-based activities, transport to medical appointments), and
support.

Information on the majority of Australian Government-funded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander substance use services are available from the Online Services Report (OSR) data collection. While the number of treatment episodes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is reported through the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Services National Minimum Data Set (AODTS NMDS), it does not represent all alcohol and other drug treatments provided to Indigenous people in Australia. The OSR and AODTS NMDS have different collection purposes, scope and counting rules (see Box 1 for details).

Key data from the 2015–16 OSR relevant to substance-use issues are provided below.

Substance use issues

The 5 most common substance-use issues reported by organisations providing substance-use services in 2015–16, in terms of staff time and organisational resources, were alcohol, cannabis or marijuana, amphetamines, multiple drug use and tobacco or nicotine (Table 1). In 2015–16, all of the 80 organisations reported alcohol as one of their 5 most common substance-use issues and almost all (94%) reported cannabis or marijuana. Organisations reporting amphetamines as a common substance-use issue increased from 45% in 2013–14 to 70% in 2014–15, and increased again to 79% in 2015–16. This pattern was consistent across remoteness areas.

Table 1: Number of organisations reporting common substance-use issues, by remoteness area, 2015–16
Substance use issue	Major cities	Inner regional	Outer regional	Remote	Very remote	Total
Alcohol	16	14	19	16	15	80
Cannabis/marijuana	13	13	18	16	15	75
Amphetamines	15	13	17	10	8	63
Multiple drug use	12	10	14	7	6	49
Tobacco/nicotine	6	8	12	9	11	46

Note: Organisations were asked to report on their 5 most important substance-use issues in terms of staff time and organisational resources.

Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2017. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health organisations: Online Services Report—key results 2015–16. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services report No. 8. Cat. no. IHW 180. Canberra: AIHW.

Substance-use services

In 2015–16, OSR substance-use services provided:

around 170,370 episodes
to around 32,740 clients
by 80 organisations (Table 2).

Table 2: Number of substance-use organisations, clients and episodes, by remoteness area, 2015–16
	Organisations No.	Organisations %	No.	Clients %	Episodes No.	Episodes %
Major cities	16	20.0	11,297	34.5	46,360	27.2
Inner regional	14	17.5	2,149	6.6	13,727	8.1
Outer regional	19	23.8	5,217	15.9	30,698	18.0
Remote	16	20.0	9,248	28.2	25,091	14.7
Very remote	15	18.8	4,829	14.7	54,494	32.0
Total	80	100.0	32,740	100.0	170,370	100.0

Notes:

Client numbers for 2012–13 and 2013–14 have been revised down due to data quality issues discovered in this year’s collection that were also occurring in these years. Errors in the data extracted from the PIRS of a few primary health-care organisations were found.
In 2014–15, the reporting period was 1 June 2014 to 31 May 2015. Before 2014–15, it was the financial year from 1 July to 30 June.

By remoteness area:

Nearly one-quarter (24%) of organisations were located in Outer regional areas, while one-fifth were in both Remote areas (20%)and Major cities (20%).
Organisations in Outer regional areas provided services to around 5,200 (16%) clients, while organisations in Very remote areas provided services to around 4,800 (15%) clients.

Substance use treatment

Substance-use organisations provide treatment and assistance through residential treatment programs, sobering-up services and non-residential programs. In 2015–16:

just over half of clients (54%) receiving treatment were male
most episodes of care (87%) were for non-residential services (e.g. counselling), and male and female clients were equally likely to seek this type of treatment (a change from previous years, when female clients were slightly more likely to seek this type of treatment)
around 18,400 episodes of care (11%) were provided to clients accessing sobering-up services (overnight residential care, with no formal rehabilitation)
8% of clients received treatment in a residential service (temporary live-in accommodation for formal substance-use treatment and rehabilitation) (Table 3).

Table 3: Estimated number of clients and episodes of care, by sex and treatment type, 2015–16
Treatment type	Male No.	Male %	Female No.	Female %	Unknown No.	Unknown %	Total No.	Total %
Clients
Residential	1,984	9.9	782	4.7	78	11.0	2,844	7.6
Sobering-up	3,983	19.9	4,095	24.6	2	0.3	8,080	21.6
Non-residential	14,084	70.2	11,751	70.7	632	88.8	26,467	70.8
Total	20,051	53.6	16,628	44.5	712	1.9	37,391	100.0
Episodes
Residential	2,200	2.5	894	1.1	79	6.0	3,173	1.9
Sobering-up	9,586	11.0	8,767	10.8	2	0.2	18,355	10.8
Non-residential	75,725	86.5	71,888	88.2	1,229	93.8	148,842	87.4
Total	87,511	51.4	81,549	47.9	1,310	0.8	170,370	100.0

Note: Client numbers will differ to those presented in Table 2 as clients may be counted more than once if they attended multiple programs. In addition, data from some organisations have been excluded due to data quality issues.

Box 1: Comparison of treatment episode definitions in the OSR and AODTS NMDS

The OSR definition of ‘episode of care’ starts at admission and ends at discharge (for residential treatment/rehabilitation and sobering-up/respite). ‘Other care’ refers to non-residential programs where the definition of ‘episode of care’ relates more to the number of visits or phone calls undertaken with clients. In contrast to the definition of ‘closed treatment episode’ used in the AODTS NMDS, the definition used in this collection does not require agencies to begin a new ‘episode of care’ when the main treatment type (‘treatment type’) or primary drug of concern (‘substance/drug’) changes. It is therefore likely that this concept of ‘episode of care’ produces smaller estimates of activity than the AODTS NMDS concept of ‘closed treatment episode’.

The OSR collection, managed by the AIHW, records information about clients of any age, whereas the AODTS NMDS reports only about clients aged 10 and over.

These differences mean that the two collections are not directly comparable.