Over the last 8 years, I have been privileged to talk to the leaders of many addiction treatment programs who care deeply about their patients and are doing everything possible to help them become and remain clean and sober. Unfortunately, not all treatment centers are as well-run and altruistic. As the demand for treatment explodes, some programs seem to be primarily focused on profiting from the addicts cycling through one treatment program after another.
The problem that effective centers have is that without data there’s no way for potential patients or payers to tell which group a treatment center belongs to.
And this lack of data has life-and-death repercussions. When my daughter was drinking to lethal levels, I was repeatedly asked to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for treatment based solely on the fact that the person on the phone sounded nice and said “trust me; we’re better than the others”. Addicts are dying because there’s no way to identify the treatment programs with the best success rates.
So if you know that your treatment program is doing a particularly good job preparing your patients for long-term sobriety, you owe it to yourself – and to those desperately searching for excellent treatment for their loved ones – to prove it. Our mission is to help you do so as inexpensively as possible.
Here are four benefits to enrolling in Vista’s Outcomes Research:
- As an independent research agency, our results will be trusted. There are many bad actors in this industry spouting poppycock success rates. Data you generate yourself is, frankly, suspect.
- We will dig deep into your results to identify opportunities where your center can improve. Our annual Strategic Analysis will analyze your data by counselor, co-occurring disorder, demographics and drug of choice, and will compare your results to historical and Vista-generated industry benchmarks. For the first time, you’ll have hard data on which you can base treatment decisions and identify any areas of your operation ripe for improvement.
- Pay for performance is coming. At some point in the not-too-distant future, you will be required to provide Outcomes results to payers. Just in case your results are not as good as expected, don’t you want to find out now while you can choose to keep the results to yourself as you work on strengthening your outcomes?
- Excellent results can be an incredible marketing advantage. In addition to the Strategic Analysis, Vista will also produce an annual Treatment Effectiveness report designed to be shared with payers and prospective patients and their families. This report summarizes how successful your patients were in remaining clean and sober for a year after treatment as well as the impact treatment had on their quality of life.
Additionally, Conquer Addiction, Vista’s sister organization, publishes a searchable database of treatment centers that shows the few centers with strong one-year sobriety success rates at the top of relevant searches. Conquer Addiction also awards an “Excellence in Treatment” medallion to those centers who can show that at one year after treatment, at least 30% of their patients have abstained from all drugs and alcohol for the last 30 days.
If you’re running an excellent treatment program, we’d like to help you prove it. Start measuring your post-treatment outcomes and use your results to attract more patients!
