National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS)
Health Research Board (HRB)- National Health Information Systems Unit.
1995
The NDTRS was established as an epidemiological database on drug and alcohol misuse treatment episodes in publically funded services.It records incidence of drug and alcohol treatment.
Treatment as defined in the NDTRS:
- any activity that aims to improve the psychological, medical and social state of individuals
- one or more of the following: medication (detoxification, methadone reduction and substitution programmes), addiction counselling, group therapy, psychotherapy and/or life skills training
- treatment in residential and non-residential settings
- treatment in prison.
Treatment episodes on functional addictions e.g. gambling, spending etc are submitted on voluntary basis.
Treatment episodes on concerned persons i.e. people affected by the drug use of another person are submitted on a voluntary basis.
NDTRS does not include:
- programme that provide needle exchange only
- interventions solely concerned with the physical complications of problem drug or alcohol use (for example, emergency response to overdoses, or treatment of blood-borne infections and sexually transmitted infections)
- contacts with services which involve requests for social assistance only
- interventions for non-addiction issues (e.g., mental health problems, social issues) without also providing interventions for an addiction issue
- requests for practical information only
- contacts by telephone, letter or internet only (unless a treatment activity is provided via teleworking).
National
Data is published annually (approximately 6 months in arrears) however the on-line portal can faciliate real time reporting.
The NDTRS is an epidemiological database on treated cases problem drug and alcohol use in Ireland. It records episodes of treatment during the calendar year. It also records incidence and prevalence of drug and alcohol treatment.
Addiction services
HSE
Drug and alcohol Task Force
Policy makers
Academics
Advocacy groups
International agencies which monitor data on drug treatment.
Basic demographic information; reason for treatment, source of referral. If treated, up to 5 problem drugs including alcohol can be recorded; history of drug use; risk behaviour in relation to injecting; type of treatment; treatment outcomes.
A comprehensive data collection protocol is available which outlines all the questions and responses: https://www.hrb.ie/data-collections-evidence/alcohol-and-drug-treatment/how-data-is-collected/
PPSN is not collected. There is a facility to collect IHI built into the on-line portal.
Geocodes for place of residence
Sex (including transgender)
Self defined sexual orientation
Country of birth
Lanuage spoken at home
Ethnicity
Occupation
Employment status.
Service providers at drug treatment centres throughout Ireland compile a record of each episode of treatment who attends through the online data entry portal. Submission of data on paper forms can be facilitated if required.
As there is currently no unique health identifier in Ireland, the NDTRS records episodes (or cases) of treatment, not individuals.
Data is published annually (approximately 6 months in arrears) however the on-line portal can faciliate real time reporting.
N/A.
Approximately 25,000 average number of records created annually.
Annual bulletins.
Interactive tables available at http://www.drugsandalcohol.ie
Data requests to the HRB. https://www.hrb.ie/data-collections-evidence/alcohol-and-drug-treatment/request-data/
Published data on www.hrb.ie
No.
The NDTRS is compliant with current EU reporting requirements on drug treatment and as such provides annual treatment data to the EMCCDA on behalf of the Department of Health.