The Treatment Episode Data Set -- Admissions (TEDS-A) is an administrative data system providing descriptive information about the national flow of admissions to providers of substance abuse treatment. TEDS-A is part of a reporting system that was originally designed to provide annual data on the number and characteristics of persons admitted to public and private substance abuse treatment programs receiving public funding. The unit of analysis is treatment admissions. TEDS includes both Minimum Data Set (MDS) data (required reporting) and Supplemental Data Set (SuDS) data (optional reporting), as reported to state substance abuse agencies by the treatment programs.

Variables in the MDS include: information on service setting, number of prior treatments, primary source of referral, gender, race, ethnicity, education, employment status, substance(s) abused, route of administration, frequency of use, age at first use, and whether methadone was prescribed in treatment. Supplemental variables include: diagnosis codes, presence of psychiatric problems, living arrangements, source of income, health insurance, expected source of payment, pregnancy and veteran status, marital status, detailed not in labor force codes, detailed criminal justice referral codes, and days waiting to enter treatment.

Substances abused include alcohol, cocaine and crack, marijuana and hashish, heroin, nonprescription methadone, other opiates and synthetics, PCP, other hallucinogens, methamphetamine, other amphetamines, other stimulants, benzodiazepines, other non-Benzodiazepine tranquilizers, barbiturates, other non-barbiturate sedatives or hypnotics, inhalants, over-the-counter medications, and other substances.

Created variables include total number of substances reported, intravenous drug use (IDU), and flags for any mention of specific substances.

The public-use files were created using the data that were current as of April 2005 (the April 11, 2005, extract).