Estimating need and demand for treatment – a background briefing

This working paper has been prepared as part of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) commissioned review of alcohol and other drug treatment service funding, being undertaken by the Drug Policy Modelling Program. The review aims to inform the distribution of Commonwealth government alcohol and other drug treatment funding.

This paper sets out to explore the central concepts behind treatment planning: need for treatment and demand for treatment. We outline the various approaches to assessing the extent of unmet need and unmet demand, and the substantial challenges associated with creating estimates to assist health planners. The paper focuses initially on unmet need and provides examples of the difficulties associated with the accuracy of such estimates. This is followed by analysis of the methods of estimating unmet demand.

We then turn to other considerations in planning treatment services around need and demand–including the dynamic interplay between demand for treatment and service system characteristics. The paper concludes with an examination of the implications of this work for generating Australian estimates of need and demand for AOD treatment.

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