Service delivery outlet

Alcohol and other drug treatment services:

Required to identify the agency sites that conduct treatment episodes, as distinguished from administration centres. Identification of sites from which health care or community services are delivered facilitates assessment of the accessibility of services to the population.

An organisation may have one or more service delivery outlets. An organisation with a devolved structure for service delivery may or may not devolve all functions to the service delivery outlet level. It is common for administrative functions, including personnel management, to be retained at a higher or central level of an organisation. The service delivery outlet is the lowest level of an organisation at which, or from which, services are delivered. The site from which a service is delivered relates to the physical location of the service and is to be clearly differentiated from the service delivery setting which refers to the type of physical setting in which a service is actually provided to a client (e.g. client's home, non-residential treatment facility etc).

For example, where a service provider regularly delivers a service at a variety of clients' homes (e.g. home visits every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) or a mobile service delivers a service to a variety of different locations, then the service delivery outlet should be recorded as the location of the clinic in which the service provider is based. However, where a mobile unit regularly (e.g. every Monday) delivers a service from the same geographical location then this location will be recorded as the service delivery outlet.