On the eve of the second conference of the TRI-Wharton Center on the Organization and Management of Addiction Treatment, papers from the first conference one year ago receive feature status in the October issue of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.

COMAT Do-Directors A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D. from TRI, and John Kimberly, Ph.D. from Wharton, introduce the special section in their article “The Business of Addiction Treatment: A Research Agenda” discussing the challenges facing the nation’s substance abuse treatment system and the role COMAT will play in implementing and testing evidence-based methods from other problem-plagued industries.

In “The Role of Organization and Management in Substance Abuse Treatment: Review and Roadmap,” Thomas D’Aunno, Ph.D. examines the relationship between organization and management factors and use of research-based treatments in practice, concluding with a discussion of next steps for research and policy.

Paul M. Roman, Ph.D., Lori J. Ducharme, Ph.D. and Hannah K. Knudsen, Ph.D. summarize key findings of an organizational comparison of two large samples of treatment programs in “Patterns of Organization and Management in Private and Public Substance Abuse Treatment Programs.” Among their findings: pharmacological therapies are more likely to be used in private centers, while voucher approaches are more likely in public centers.

“Does America Spend Enough on Addiction Treatment? Results from Public Opinion Surveys” is an article by Michael T. French, Ph.D., Jenny F. Horner, Ph.D. and Amie L. Nielsen, Ph.D. exploring the paradoxically low opinion of addictions treatment in the United States even while a large body of research literature demonstrates its clinical and economic benefits.

In the final article, “Industry Evolution through Consolidation: Implications for Addictions Treatment,” authors Rafael A. Corredoira, Ph.D. and John Kimberly, Ph.D. cite major realignments in other industries to argue that the business of addictions treatment is likely to be transformed by a period of consolidation, in which a number of small, independent programs will be acquired by larger, better-capitalized and managerially more sophisticated enterprises. Not known is whether an industry-wide consolidation will lead to quality improvement through increased competition among larger providers, or – if the larger providers are publicly traded – quality will be subordinated to pressures to maintain or increase earnings and share price.