The Uniform Accounting System and Cost Reporting for Substance Abuse Treatment Providers was also developed more as a tool for treatment providers than for academic researchers (Caliber 1998a,b). Like DATCAP, it measures costs from the perspective of the provider organization. The Uniform System differs from DATCAP by focusing on accounting costs, which are based on a treatment program’s actual expenditures for goods and services used in providing treatment. These differ from economic costs (market value costs) whenever the treatment provider has access to free or subsidized resources, such as volunteer labor, the use of free or subsidized space, or donated food (Dunlap and French 1998). The purpose of a study and the perspective of its authors determine which of the two systems is more desirable. Most treatment providers would probably be more comfortable with accounting costs, as these most closely resemble the budgets that will be needed to provide the services. Researchers, on the other hand, are more likely to prefer economic costs, since conclusions based on the comparison of costs between programs should not be confounded by uneven access to free or subsidized resources.
