Health services research in alcoholism: current status and future directions with special emphasis on opportunities in the Veterans Administration.

Alcoholism has become an important health care problem for the United States and the VA medical care system. The percentage of inpatients in Veterans Administration hospitals with a diagnosis of alcoholism rose from 13.0% in 1970 to a high of 15.6% in 1977. Health services research work in alcoholism has generally fallen into four major areas: community diagnosis; utilization of services by alcoholics; the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of services; and the organization of information systems and their applicability to alcoholism. Obstacles to research include a poor understanding of the prevalence of the disease among the veteran's population, but the system offers many more opportunities than obstacles. A new information system, SATAR (Substance Abuse Treatment Automated Records), offers a chance for large-scale investigation of the problem of alcoholism among VA patients when combined with other information systems and allows for special comparisons through its large, integrated network of hospitals and clinics.