In this time of tremendous industry upheaval, your ability to convince key payers of the unique value your addiction treatment center provides is crucial to your ability to stay in business.
How do you do this? A good place to start is to find one or two things that your center does uniquely well and that are major pain points for the payer. Here are some questions to ask to get your creative juices flowing:
Is there a type of patient you are particularly successful in treating? Possible examples might be patients who’ve been injecting heroin for 3 or more years, adolescents who regularly drink to potentially lethal levels, or patients who’ve attended SUD treatment 10 or more times.
Payers are under tremendous pressure to reduce the cost of the care they provide. Can you prove that your patients used dramatically fewer emergency room visits, unplanned hospital stays or detox treatment episodes in the year after attending your treatment versus the year before?
Are your patients more satisfied with the treatment you provide than is true for similar programs regionally or nationally?
Most importantly, can you prove that a high percentage of your patients are able to stop abusing drugs and alcohol and remain in recovery long-term?
Your ability to convince payers of one or more of the above points of differentiation makes it far more likely you will be able to negotiate an agreement that adequately reimburses your program. The hitch? You have to have outcomes data to convincingly make any of these arguments, and it will take you time to generate the data you need.