Education for Rural Health Services Administration

This section briefly describes the administrative needs of rural health services delivery entities, especially hospitals. It then reviews the educational processes in which health administrators are trained, with a focus on changes that have emerged during the 1980s. The final section examines the extent to which the educational programs are consistent with the needs of rural environments, and provides some suggested strategies for the coming decade.     

Evaluation in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

The evaluation policy of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is described in this article. Three studies are presented that exemplify SAMHSA's evaluations. These include evaluations of a program to prevent substance abuse among pregnant and postpartum women and their infants; a Job Corps treatment enrichment program; and the McKinney program for homeless persons with severe mental illnesses. Each of these evaluations demonstrated the effectiveness of the programs in reducing substance abuse or homelessness and in improving the health and well-being of the consumers served. SAMHSA will use the results of these and similar evaluations to guide policy and program development. Through its evaluations, SAMHSA must identify effective approaches to prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. By using its evaluation results to guide policy and program development, SAMHSA aims to improve the quality of the public system of substance abuse and mental health services.     

Evaluation in the Health Resources and Services Administration. Improving program performance

The mission of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is to improve the health of the nation by assuring quality health care to underserved and vulnerable populations and by promoting a primary care and public health workforce. This article provides an overview of HRSA's prior work in performance measurement and highlights a current initiative designed to help the agency improve its performance measurement efforts in the context of the Government Performance and Results Act. This initiative began with an agencywide assessment of capacity to measure performance at program, bureau, and agency levels. Based on the findings, HRSA is moving forward both with technical assistance to individual bureaus in developing performance indicators and data sources and with activities to coordinate performance measurement for the agency as a whole.     

Substance Use Disorder Treatment Services for Women in the Veterans Health Administration

PurposeThe present study used national Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facility-level data to examine the extent of women's specialty substance use disorder (SUD) treatment programming in the VHA. In addition, the study compared facilities with women's specialty SUD programming with facilities without to determine whether having this programming was associated with serving other special patient populations, treatment staffing, and breadth of service provision.MethodsThe study used data from the VHA Program Evaluation and Resource Center's Drug and Alcohol Program Survey, conducted in 2015 (100% response rate among VHA specialty SUD treatment programs). Program responses were calculated at the facility level (n = 140 VHA facilities).Main FindingsThe majority of VHA facilities (85%) provided women veterans with SUD-specific individual psychotherapy. However, only 30% of facilities provided SUD-specific groups for women only, and only 14% provided SUD–posttraumatic stress disorder groups for women only in specialty SUD treatment. VHA facilities with greater numbers of specialty SUD treatment staff members, a greater breadth of staff roles, and a broader scope of treatment services, activities, and practices were more likely to provide women-only groups.ConclusionsBecause the number of women veterans in specialty SUD treatment is likely to continue to grow, these data serve as a benchmark against which future administrations of the Drug and Alcohol Program Survey will document the extent to which VHA services are responsive to their needs.