Access to Residential Substance Use Disorder Treatment Centers Caring for Teens is Costly and Limited

A new study finds access to residential treatment centers caring for teens under 18 with substance use disorder is limited and costly in the United States.

The researchers found that 54% of residential treatment facilities they contacted had a bed immediately available. For those that had a waitlist, the average estimated time before a bed opened was 28 days. The average daily cost per day of treatment was $878, and almost half of the facilities that provided information required partial or full payment up front, HealthDay reports. The average quoted cost of a month’s stay at a residential treatment facility was more than $26,000.

The findings build on previous research that found just one in four residential treatment centers caring for U.S. teens under 18 provide buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder. The study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

“The ability to access timely, evidence-based treatment for addiction can be a matter of life or death, and the current system too often fails young people,” Nora Volkow, M.D., director of NIDA, said in a news release. “We need to make access to timely, affordable, and evidence-based care the norm across treatment settings.”