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[Federal Register Volume 72, Number 126 (Monday, July 2, 2007)]
[Notices]
[Pages 36010-36012]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 07-3207]

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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB 
Review; Comment Request

    Periodically, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services 
Administration (SAMHSA) will publish a summary of information 
collection requests under the Office of management and Budget's (OMB) 
review, in compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 
Chapter 35). To request a copy of these documents, call the SAMHSA 
Reports Clearance Officer on (240) 276-1243.
    Project Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant 
Uniform Application Guidance and Instructions FY 2008-2010 and 
Regulations (OMB No. 0930-0080)--Revision.
    Sections 1921 through 1935 of the Public Health Service Act (U.S.C. 
300x-21 to 300x-35) provide for annual allotments to assist States to 
plan, carry out and evaluate activities to prevent and treat substance 
abuse and for related activities. Under the provisions of the law, 
States may receive allotments only after an application is submitted 
and approved by the Secretary, DHHS. For the Federal fiscal year (FY) 
2008-2010 Substance Abuse prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant 
application cycles, SAMHSA will provide States with revised application 
guidance and instructions to implement changes made in accordance with 
the recommendations of OMB's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) 
analysis. In addition, SAMHSA has incorporated recommendations from the 
National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors 
(NASADAD) and their member States in the revisions and clarification of 
data reporting requirements and instructions.
    During the negotiations with the States resulting in agreement on 
the National Outcome Measures (NOMs) for substance abuse treatment and 
prevention, SAMHSA pledged to the States to:
    1. Reduce respondent burden;
    2. work with the States to improve performance management of the 
SAPT Block Grant;
    3. improve the availability, timeliness, and quality of data 
available to Federal, State, and provider administrators of block grant 
funded programs.
    This revision of the Uniform Application and Regulation for the 
SAPT Block Grant takes initial steps toward implementing these 
commitments. Individual States may reduce their respondent burden by 
selecting the option of using SAMHSA pre-populated tables for Section 
IVa and b. The data for these tables would be drawn from SAMHSA data 
sets known as Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS) 
Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) and National Survey on Drug Use and 
Health (NSDUH) by SAMHSA and provided to the States. SAMHSA is 
providing the States with the option of reporting on prevention 
expenditures utilizing the six prevention strategies or utilizing the 
Institute of Medicine classification of

[[Page 36011]]

Universal, Selective or Indicated. SAMHSA has designed the State 
Prevention Framework State Incentive Grand (SPF SIG) competitive 
program and funded contracts in States without a SPF SIG to support 
data driven prevention planning by Substance Abuse State Agencies. This 
application has been modified to encourage the States to use the State 
level data collected with support from these programs in the planning 
in section III of this SAPT Block grant application.
    The addition of on-going provider performance monitoring (page 90-
7) and the narratives describing State Performance Management and 
Leadership (page 93) begin the process of aligning the application with 
the performance management criteria embodied in the OMB PART program.
    In the coming 12 months, SAMHSA will continue to work with the 
States to assess the feasibility and usefulness of pre-populating the 
following sections of the application with data extracted from SAMHSA 
data sets to further reduce respondent burden:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Form 6..........................  Entity Inventory..  National Survey of
                                                       Substance Abuse
                                                       Treatment
                                                       Services data set
Form 7 a & b....................  Treatment           DASIS/TEDS/SOMMS
                                   Utilization
                                   Matrix.
Form 8..........................  Treatment Needs     NSDUH, State, and
                                   Assessment.         sub-State
Forms T109T7....................  Treatment           DASIS/SOMMS
                                   Performance
                                   Measures.
Form P109P15....................  Prevention          NSDUH
                                   Performance
                                   Measures.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

    In addition, NSDUH estimates of persons (1)needing, (2) needing and 
seeking, and (3) needing, seeking and not receiving treatment will be 
examined for application to the planning requirements of PART 
requirements.
    SAMHSA will also code all application content against PART 
requirements to insure that all requirements are appropriately 
addressed by applicants and Federal staff.
    In December 2004, SAMHSA and the States agreed on the goal of 
having all States reporting the NOMs measures as defined at the meeting 
by the end of a 3-year implementation period starting in FY 2005 and 
concluding at the end of FY 2007. By January 2006, supportive technical 
assistance on information technology design and payment for data 
submitted became available by the State Outcomes Measurement and 
Management System (SOMMS) program. States who have participated in the 
SOMMS/NOMs subcontracts may choose to have their data pre-populated 
which would significantly reduce their reporting burden for this 
application. During the next 12 months, SAMHSA in partnership with the 
States and all other SAPT Block Grant stakeholders will develop 
standards for analyzing and responding to the results of NOMs data 
appropriate to each level of block grant fund administration including 
Federal, State, and Provider roles and responsibilities.
    SAMHSA and the States also recognized that States would require 
technical assistance in information technology and software purchasing 
to implement the new NOMs data set and SAMHSA agreed to realign 
resources to contract for this specialized technical assistance. This 
technical assistance first became available in September 2006 and the 
first project was just completed.
    Thirty-eight States are currently reporting all or some of the NOM 
measures and 46 States have State or SAMHSA support contracts in place 
to develop and operationalize the necessary data infrastructure to 
report all NOMs.
    So long as States are progressing toward achieving this goal by 
currently reporting some or all NOM data and are partnering with SAMHSA 
to install the necessary infrastructure to report all NOMs, because of 
the delay securing the necessary information technology technical 
assistance or the extent to which hardware and software had to be 
purchased, SAMHSA will continue to accept data submitted as part of the 
uniform application as meeting the NOMs reporting requirement of the 
2008 Presidents Budget.
    Revisions to the previously-approved application resulting from 
such stakeholder input reflect the following changes: (1) In Section I, 
Form 2, ``Table of Contents,'' was revised to appropriately enumerate 
the specific items within each section; (2) In Section II, the 
Narrative description of certain maintenance of effort and expenditure 
base calculations was simplified to require submission of such 
information only if it represented a revision from previous years' 
submissions. This section was also moved to its more appropriate place 
in the application immediately preceding reporting on maintenance of 
efforts; (3) In Section II, Form 4, ``Substance Abuse State Agency 
Spending Report,'' was amended to use consistent language for services 
expenditure reporting and planning across Forms 4, 6, and 11. On Form 4 
and Form 11, Row 1, the activity to be reported on is entitled: SAPT 
Block Grant funds for Substance Abuse Prevention (other than primary 
prevention) and Treatment Services to be consistent with the 
terminology used in Form 6, Column 5; (4) In Section II, Form 6, 
``Entity Inventory,'' instructions were clarified to communicate that 
information on all substance abuse prevention and treatment service 
providers funded through the SSA was sought; (5) In Section II, Form 
7A, ``Treatment Utilization Matrix,'' instructions were clarified to 
communicate that information on persons admitted and served within the 
specific reporting period was sought to enable the SAPT Block Grant 
Program to address the recommendations of the FY 2003 OMB PART 
analysis; (6) In Section II, Form 7B, ``Number Of Persons SErved 
(Unduplicated Count) For Alcohol And Other Drug Use In State Funded 
Services,'' instructions were clarified in a similar manner as Form 7A 
and a separate data cell was added to accommodate States' desires to 
report on clients admitted in a prior reporting period but also 
continuing to be served within the current reporting period; (7) In 
Section II, Table I (Maintenance), ``Single State Agency (SSA) 
Expenditures for Substance Abuse'' was amended to reflect the 
appropriate State fiscal year and the corresponding instructions were 
amended; (8) In Section II, Table II (Maintenance), ``Statewide Non-
Federal Expenditures or Tuberculosis Services to Substance Abusers in 
Treatment,'' was amended to reflect the appropriate State fiscal year 
and the corresponding instructions were amended; (9) In Section II, 
Table III (Maintenance), ``Statewide Non-Federal Expenditures for HIV 
Early Intervention Services to Substance Abusers in Treatment,'' was 
amended to allow States to enter the appropriate State fiscal year and 
the corresponding instructions were amended; (10) In Section II, Table 
IV (Maintenance), ``SSA Expenditures for Women's Services,'' was 
amended to reflect the appropriate fiscal year and the corresponding 
instructions were amended; (11) In Section III, Form 11,

[[Page 36012]]

``Intended Use Plan,'' was amended to use consistent language for 
services expenditure reporting and planning; (12) In Section IV, 
subparts IV-A and IV-B, ``Voluntary Treatment Performance Measures'' 
and ``Voluntary Prevention Performance Measures'' all references to the 
term Voluntary are deleted as reporting on these measures will no 
longer be voluntary; (13) In Section IV-A, ``Treatment Performance 
Measures,'' the general instructions were amended to implement 
mandatory reporting on performance measure Forms T1-T7 and a narrative 
requirement is proposed to collection information on States internal 
practices to use performance measure data to manage their systems; (14) 
In Section IV-A, ``Treatment Performance Measures'' Forms T1-T7 data 
specifications replaced State detail sheet narrative requirements for 
Forms T1-T7 to reduce the burden of reporting and improve the 
uniformity of data quality information being collected; (15) The 
Section IV-A, ``Treatment Performance Measures'' T6 on infectious 
disease control efforts was deleted because it was determined to be 
duplicative of information requirements in Section II of the 
application; (16) In Section IV, subpart IV-B, ``Prevention Performance 
Measures'' Forms P5 and P6 were removed, P1-P15 were substituted for 
the previous Forms P1-P4 and the instructions were amended to address 
pre-population of prevention performance data.
    The total annual reporting burden estimate is shown below:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                     Number of     Responses per   Number hours
                                                    respondents     respondent     per response     Total hours
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sections I-III--States and Territories..........              60               1             470          28,200
Section IV-A....................................              60               1              40           2,400
Section IV-B....................................              60               1           42.75           2,565
Recordkeeping...................................              60               1              16             960
                                                 ---------------------------------------------------------------
    Total.......................................              60  ..............  ..............          34,125
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Written comments and recommendations concerning the proposed 
information collection should be sent by August 1, 2007 to: SAMHSA Desk 
Officer, Human Resources and Housing Branch, Office of Management and 
Budget, New Executive Office Building, Room 10235, Washington, DC 
20503; due to potential delays in OBM's receipt and processing of mail 
sent through the U.S. Postal Service, respondents are encouraged to 
submit comments by fax to 202-395-6974.

    Dated: June 25, 2007.
Elaine Parry,
Acting Director, Office of Program Services.
[FR Doc. 07-3207 Filed 6-29-07; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4162-20-M
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