We reported in August that alcohol and drug services are required to submit alcohol data to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) from April 2008. I asked Don Shenker, Director of Policy and Services at Alcohol Concern for some background to this, and about support for services in meeting this requirement. Here's what he said:
Meanwhile, Mary Longley, Primary Care Alcohol Development Facilitator at Camden PCT sent me this query:
I was wondering, do you have any information about plans to introduce reporting for alcohol in April 2008? I'm particularly interested to know if the format of counting the number of days' consumption of alcohol in the last 28 which is required for current drugs monitoring is going to be replicated, and how it is intended that any system of quantification be dovetailed with screening instruments which fail to yield this information comprehensively?
If any readers have answers or other queries, please do send them in (email me) or leave a comment.
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