I often hear from treatment centers that outcomes research is too expensive – they simply can’t afford to prove that their treatment works.
This is nonsense.
Outcomes research is not an expense. Outcomes research is an investment that will pay off many times over in attracting more patients, keeping them longer, and earning higher reimbursement rates.
Warning: this is a long article with detailed information about how to use Vista’s outcomes research to attract more patients, get more days approved, and negotiate more effectively with payers. If you’re short on time, drop down to the ROI analysis at the end. It will blow your mind.
Three Ways Vista’s Outcomes Research Attracts More Patients
Standing out in a world of massive Google advertising and similar-looking websites is a challenge. Vista helps you break out from the pack in three ways:
Showcase your center on Conquer Addiction’s website. Allow families who are searching for treatment with excellent success rates to find you by promoting your outcomes on Conquer Addiction’s nonprofit website:
In this world of short attention spans, families spent an average of 5.4 minutes on each 5-star Conquer Addiction page over the last three months.
Why? As I learned when I was searching for treatment for my alcoholic daughter, families desperately want to send their loved ones to treatment centers that can prove their treatment works. They are proving this by devouring the independently-verified research results they can only find on Conquer Addiction:
And talk about bang for the buck! Having a page on Conquer Addiction costs only $199 per year.
Prove to families visiting your website how important patient recovery is to you. Vista’s Prospective Patient Report shows families (and the AI bots choosing which treatment center to recommend) how much better your treatment is compared to other centers:
It also shows them the improvement your former patients are reporting in how well they’re getting along with their closest family members:
and in being gainfully employed or back in school:
Prove your effectiveness to employer networks like Carrum Health and individual Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). Thirteen of the 15 treatment center clients Vista has recommended for Carrum Health’s SUD Center of Excellence program have been accepted and are starting to receive referrals from large employers such as United Airlines and Boeing.
Three Ways Vista’s Research Can Increase Your Revenues
Get more days approved. In their never-ending quest to cut spending, health insurance payers often decide that patients are ready to leave treatment or step down to a lower level of care far more quickly than the clinical team feels is appropriate. If your UR team has access to Vista’s dashboard, they can persuasively argue that because the patient’s cravings or PTSD symptoms have recently skyrocketed, they need several more days residential or PHP treatment.
One of Vista’s clients, Enlightened Solutions, found that they got 13% more days approved when they were using Vista than they did the year before:
Negotiating higher reimbursement rates. Wouldn’t it be helpful to enter your payer negotiations with hard data on what they actually care about – how much money your treatment saved them last year?
Because Vista is able to reach a high percentage of patients one year after treatment, Vista clients are typically able to show that their payers that what they spent on expensive medical interventions decreased dramatically in the year after treatment for the roughly half of their members that Vista was able to reach:
Use your outcomes to enter into profitable value-based care contracts. The unfortunate truth is that health insurance companies are treating addiction and mental health care centers like a commodity, pitting one company against another to drive down prices. One way out of the rat race is to negotiate an agreement whereby your company earns a substantial bonus if you meet certain goals.
We have helped our clients negotiate several value-based agreements where Vista metrics have been used as the basis for whether the company earned an annual bonus.
Calculating the Return on Investment for Using Vista’s Outcomes Research
Let’s create a hypothetical treatment center called Apollo Recovery. Apollo is a PHP/IOP center with a typical census of 50 patients. Assuming they discharge 400 patients per year, Vista’s research will cost them $45,000 per year starting in Year Two (the first year will be substantially less):
Because Apollo’s outcomes research has proved that 44% of their patients are abstinent one year after treatment, Apollo is a 5-star rehab on Conquer Addiction and has been accepted into Carrum’s SUD Center of Excellence program.
Including Vista’s third-party proof of their effectiveness on their website has also dramatically increased the conversion rate of their website visitors as well as the number of times AI is recommending Apollo to families searching for treatment in their area.
As a result of these factors, we can conservatively estimate that 2 additional patients will enter Apollo each month on top of the 33 patients they are already recruiting.
So let’s run the math. Here’s Apollo’s starting point:
The two additional patients represent a 6% increase in the number of patients they're treating, which brings in a startling $288,000 in additional annual revenue:
This represents a 540% return on the $45,000 investment Apollo is making on Vista's outcomes research:
Note that we haven't even accounted for how Vista will help Apollo get additional days approved, negotiate higher reimbursements, and possibly enter into one or more value-based agreements.
In fact, Vista’s research is so inexpensive, the following is true:
If Vista's research helps Apollo attract only 1% more patients,
Apollo more than breaks even on its investment in outcomes research
TL;DR
In summary, outcomes research is not an operating budget expense - it is a force multiplier for your marketing spending. Your investment in Vista’s outcomes research will pay out many times over in attracting more patients and getting more revenue from those you attract.
Want to see what outcomes research could be worth to your own treatment center?
Try Vista's ROI Calculator. Determine how much Vista's research will cost based upon your typical census and the number of patients you discharge each year. Then click through to the ROI page and calculate how much additional revenue you could generate by attracting more patients or getting more days approved.
Join the many addiction and mental health treatment programs who’ve been happily investing in Vista’s outcomes research for years. Sign up for a discovery call and we’ll do a ROI analysis for your company together.
