Our View: Idaho should follow up on alcohol treatment

From July through September 2006, roughly 30 percent of clients successfully completed state alcohol treatment programs.

For the three months ending Sept. 30, this figure had climbed to 63 percent. This is clear improvement, but clearly, it's also short-term improvement.

The state has not tracked the long-term success of its alcohol treatment programs. The Department of Health and Welfare will address this shortcoming, beginning in January. It's an overdue step in ensuring adequate return on the $27.5 million spent on substance abuse treatment programs.

When state government is stretching every tax dollar during a downturn - and when about a third of the Valley's drunken drivers are repeat offenders - taxpayers deserve nothing less.

About 8,500 people, including some 1,500 juveniles, receive state-funded substance abuse treatment. All must meet state income requirements, and have addictions requiring medical treatment. About nine in 10 have been through the legal system.

Alcohol treatment tends to have a higher success rate than treatment for methamphetamine or marijuana, says Bethany Gadzinski , chief of Health and Welfare's Bureau of Substance Use Disorders. Alcoholism doesn't ravage the brain the same way meth does. Alcoholics seldom steal to support a habit and don't tend to get involved in as much illegal activity - aside, of course, from the drunken-driving arrests that often land them in treatment. Therapists also simply have more experience treating alcoholism.

Yet, at the state level, therapists have a troubling lack of understanding of the long-term success rate.

This puts treatment advocates, including lawmakers, in an awkward position. They see the pitfalls of revolving-door prosecutions of drunken drivers - such as Timothy Paul Johnson. Profiled in the Nov. 23 Statesman, Johnson is now serving a prison sentence after 19 DUI arrests. Treatment makes more sense, at least intuitively. But now, cash-strapped legislators are in the position of being forced to trust, yet verify.

Lawmakers have taken admirable steps to put money into treatment, recognizing that successful rehab beats locking up an addict, at more than $20,000 a year. Earlier this year, for instance, lawmakers challenged Gov. Butch Otter, who vetoed nearly $17 million for drug treatment programs he considered unproven; about $15 million was restored.

This is no time for the state to backslide on treatment programs - but it is time for lawmakers to track the numbers and make sure Health and Welfare applies the best ideas from other states.

Idaho's tracking plan isn't terribly long term - checkups six and 12 months after treatment. But it also goes beyond merely touching base with clients. Health and Welfare already can access Correction Department records, but is looking to build a coordinated database with the courts and the Labor Department, looking for arrests or job losses that could signal a possible relapse.

The state also begins tracking with an important advantage: the power of the pocketbook. The management services contractor handling treatment programs for Health and Welfare will be expected to meet or exceed the national average treatment success rate, or risk losing its contract, Gadzinski says. The contractor's performance will be checked quarterly, and that should be motivation enough to ensure Idaho is looking for best practices in other states, and applying these techniques here.

But it is the job of the governor and legislators to make sure. By measuring success, and combing the numbers for constant improvement, the state can protect public safety and the taxpayers' investment.

"Our View" is the editorial position of the Idaho Statesman. It is an unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Statesman's editorial board.