The Brief Treatment Cost Analysis Tool (TCAT-Lite) for Substance Abuse Treatment: Reliability and Application

Abstract

Although several costing instruments have been previously developed, few have been validated or applied systematically to the delivery of evidence-based practices (EBPs). Using data collected from 26 organizations implementing the same EBP, this article examines the reliability, validity, and applicability of the brief Treatment Cost Analysis Tool (TCAT-Lite). The TCAT-Lite demonstrated good reliability—correlations between replications averaged 0.61. Validity also was high, with correlation of treated episodes per $100,000 between the TCAT-Lite and independent data of 0.57. In terms of applicability, cost calculations found that if all organizations had operated at optimal scale (124 client episodes per year), existing funds could have supported 64% more clients.

KEYWORDS:

• Treatment
• adolescent
• cost
• efficiency
• cost function
• reliability
• validity

Notes

DSS, GKS, AKL, and BRG were supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA; R01-AA017625). BRG was supported by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (contract 270-07-0191). DSS, WZ, and manuscript preparation by Clare L. Hurley were supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Grant 65777). The authors are grateful to Michael Dennis, Mark Godley, and Susan Godley of Chestnut Health Systems for their leadership under the SAMSHA initiative on which this project is based, to Patrick Flynn and Danica Knight of Texas Christian University for valuable advice, to Christiana Atuaka and Veronika Ancukiewicz of Brandeis University for assistance with administering the TCATs, to Clare L. Hurley of Brandeis University for editorial assistance, and to staff of all participating sites for their cooperation. None of the funders were involved in study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or decision to submit.

*p < .05,

**p < .01,

***p < .001.

^aStandard error = 0.041.

*p < .05,

**p < .01,

***p < .001.