For years, the addiction treatment community operated on the outskirts of the medical community. Doctors largely believed that people with SUD - simply called “addicts” in the past - were beyond help. Most programs designed to address addiction were designed by people with lived experience. Many were faith-based.
As the disease model for addiction becomes more established and insurance companies are compelled to provide more comprehensive behavioral health care coverage, the addiction treatment community is still adapting.
News reports like to repeat over and over again that we don’t have “proof” that our treatments work. They like to point out that we don’t have large scale studies indicating which modalities work better than others.
By and large, they’re right.
Large-scale research for addiction treatment lags far behind research for other health conditions. As an industry, we’ve been slow to move towards standardized models for understanding and evaluating the success of our work.
That’s changing now as market forces are requiring the addiction treatment to undertake objective progress monitoring and outcomes tracking as never before.
Today, we’ll look at why it’s more important than ever to commit to tracking outcomes at your addiction treatment organization.
Value Based Care for Addiction Treatment Requires Outcomes Tracking
We’ve spoken on this blog before about what value based care is and how outcomes tracking is inextricably linked to value based care.
Value based care, unlike the traditional fee-for-service model, rewards providers who provide data that their treatment works. Already prevalent in other areas of medicine, value based care is making its way slowly into how insurance companies interact with the addiction treatment community.
The Joint Commission began requiring accredited behavioral health providers to conduct standardized “outcomes assessments” for all patients several years ago. The NAATP requires its members to do outcomes research and adhere to ethical marketing standards when reporting findings.
Certain key components of value based care have already been mandated by law in many places in the United States. Over 30 states now require addiction treatment providers to use ASAM’s Six Dimensions model for continuously evaluating the appropriate level of care for a patient with SUD.
Briefly, they are:
Dimension 1 - Acute Intoxication and/or Withdrawal Potential
Dimension 2 - Biomedical Conditions and Complications
Dimension 3 - Emotional, Behavioral, or Cognitive Conditions and Complications
Dimension 4 - Readiness to Change
Dimension 5 - Relapse, Continued Use, or Continued Problem Potential
Dimension 6 - Recovery/Living Environment
This national set of criteria for outcome-focused treatment provides the backbone of standardization and measurability that will more easily pave the way for wide-scale implementation of value based care.
If You Think Addiction Treatment Outcomes Tracking is Just About Alumni, You’re Doing it Wrong
Many providers make the mistake of underestimating the seismic shift represented by value based care.
Outcomes tracking isn’t just about checking in with alumni and doing post-treatment assessments to track the success of treatment.
Instead, outcomes tracking is infused in the entire treatment process, from beginning to end. Whether you hear it called “progress monitoring,” “measurement-based care,” “outcome tracking” or “feedback systems,” the idea remains the same. The type of comprehensive outcomes tracking required by value based care models begins at intake and continues long after a patient officially leaves your care. Every touchpoint needs to be molded by the same overarching set of standards to ensure the continuity and validity of the data you’re collecting.
If your EHR isn’t up to the task, will you need to make an update? The short answer is yes.
At Behave Health, we build outcomes tracking into every part of addiction treatment software.
Every piece of data is synthesized (and made easily exportable) so that the heavy lifting of progress monitoring and analysis is already taken care of for you.
From intake assessment to alumni engagement, our software solution can guide your organization before, during and after the switch to value based care.
Even better? We are continuously monitoring the ever changing landscape of insurance requirements and legal regulations. We make automatic real-time updates to your system to keep you compliant with the latest developments. Even as changes are made to the addiction treatment landscape - and we assure you, there will be changes - you never have to wonder if you’re doing it wrong.
Our experts have always got you covered.
Crazy But True: Outcomes Tracking Actually Improves Addiction Treatment Quality
Is outcomes tracking just about staying compliant with insurance requirements?
Hardly.
There have been several studies (check them out here and here) that show that addiction treatment organizations that track outcomes actually have better outcomes than organizations that don’t, even when they are providing the same type of treatment and level of care.
Why?
Because when clinicians have information that objectively demonstrates their clients aren’t succeeding on some level in treatment, they are empowered to act. When it comes to outcomes tracking, knowledge is power.
When counselors receive progress monitoring data, and that data shows that a patient is “off-track,” counselors are prompted to change course, identify clinically significant barriers to treatment, switch modalities, reevaluate level of care, and/or bring the case to supervision and get an outside perspective on how to improve their response.
Ready to Get Started with Outcomes Tracking at Your Addiction Treatment Facility?
We can help. At Behave Health, we specialize in software solutions designed especially for today’s addiction treatment community. Our platform walks you through the outcomes tracking process using clinical research measures and benchmark data so you can see how your clinicians are doing in real-time. With Behave Health, you can automatically generate the types of reports insurance companies need under a value based care model.
Ready to take a closer look at what we can do for your business?
Get your free trial started today and see why more addiction treatment centers prefer Behave Health.