Estimating Per Unit Treatment Costs for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Programs

Date: 03/1999

Author(s): Barbara Dickey, Ph.D., Jennifer K. Beecham, Ph.D., Eric Latimer, Ph.D., H. Stephen Leff, Ph.D.

This toolkit is designed for program evaluators and others who wish to understand how unit costs of specific mental health services are estimated, especially where data available to carry out estimations vary in both quantity and quality. Per unit costs are the key to determination of per person expenditures. This toolkit has been developed to offer some practical methods for arriving at unit cost estimates when it is not possible to gain access to the cost accounts needed to calculate precisely the per unit cost of providing a specific service from a specific site. The toolkit also helps the reader to gauge the precision of such estimates.

Download Publication

How can we help?

Let's talk