You already know your treatment center is providing excellent care, but do you have the numbers to back it up?

Anecdotal evidence is no longer enough to convince prospective clients and their families to trust your center with a life-and-death behavioral health crisis.

With more and more health insurance companies transitioning from the fee-for-service model to the values-based care model, it is commonplace for insurers to require that behavioral health providers use standardized measures of treatment and outcomes tracking.

Outcomes tracking is important for accreditation, too. As of 2018, the Joint Commission began requiring all accredited behavioral health providers to launch an outcomes tracking system using a “standardized tool or instrument.”

Solid, evidence-based outcomes tracking is more important now than ever before in the behavioral health industry. Today let’s look at 5 tips to help you develop an effective, efficient outcome tracking system for your behavioral health organization.

Outcome Tracking Tip #1—Determine How Outcomes Tracking Applies to Your Treatment Center’s Goals

Outcomes tracking is vital to building successful relationships with insurance companies, obtaining certain accreditations, building a positive reputation with community referral partners, reaching marketing goals, and preserving accountability for your staff.  

Launching a robust outcomes tracking program also means capitalizing on data you’ve likely already collected in your EHR (electronic health record), which translates into better utilization of your EHR and an improved return on your investment in the software.

Consider all of these benefits when you are designing and implementing your outcomes tracking system. Identify which of these benefits help your center meet its long- and short-term goals.

Outcome Tracking Tip #2—Invest in the Data Collection Process

There’s no sugar coating it: tracking outcomes is a time-intensive process, especially without the tools you need to make the process more efficient.

Consider the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, which has tracked patient outcomes for decades. The organization staffs an entire research center, The Butler Center for Research, with full-time employees who spend 40 hours a week collecting outcomes information on alumni at one, three, six, nine, and twelve month intervals after leaving treatment. This level of outcomes tracking is, of course, well beyond the budget of most treatment centers and demonstrates how expensive outcomes tracking can be.

Other researchers who specialize in addiction treatment outcomes tracking report that it takes on average 10 or 15 contact attempts to each alumnus to collect a single data point using traditional models of outcomes information collection. That’s a lot of staff time wasted in the process of information collection!

At BehaveHealth, we provide the tools you need to make the process more efficient. Implementing a streamlined, all-in-one behavioral health management system before launching your outcomes tracking campaign helps cut administrative costs across your organization, including time spent collecting outcomes information.  

Outcome Tracking Tip #3—Define Behavioral Health Treatment Success

Too many treatment centers simply advertise a “success rate” without defining what “success” means.

For these organizations, is success abstinence? Is it program completion? Is it repaired relationships? A stable job?

In the context of behavioral health treatment, “success” can mean many different things. We know that behavioral health problems like addiction go far beyond simple patterns of substance use. Good treatment addresses the patient from a biopsychosocial approach, so it makes sense that it’s industry standard best practice to track outcome data across multiple relevant areas of interest. In addition to traditional markers such as substance use, medication-assisted treatment adherence, and dosage, consider tracking these key categories of treatment success:

• Clinical progress

• Employment

• Social progress

• Legal involvement

• Quality of life

• Patient satisfaction

Consider, too, that it’s important to screen and evaluate alumni for relapse risk factors like readiness to change, social support, motivation, and cravings. The outcomes information collection process provides an excellent opportunity to offer additional care, as needed.

Finally, encourage patients and alumni to participate in the development of personalized benchmarks that are meaningful to them like athletic achievement, educational pursuits, or parenting goals.

Outcome Tracking Tip #4—Shoot for Continuous Monitoring of Treatment Alumni

We know that addiction is a chronic disease with a high likelihood of relapse. We also know that social support for abstinence and sobriety is critical for patients during the process of re-entering “the real world” after treatment.  

The simple act of reaching out to alumni and checking on their progress can have a positive impact on treatment outcomes because it contributes to that sense of community and structure so vital to early recovery.

For all of these reasons, it’s important to check in on alumni repeatedly throughout the first twelve months following discharge—and longer, if possible. Called “continuous monitoring,” these frequent check-ins are often undertaken at baseline, one month, three months, six months, nine months, and one year post-discharge.

Start Tracking Outcomes the Easy Way

At BehaveHealth, our all-in-one cloud-based treatment center management solution comes with alumni program and outcome tracking tools built in. Our workflows are easy to use and ready to implement at your organization. All of the data you need to develop a robust outcomes tracking program is in one place, making it easy to keep tabs on all of your alumni.

Why not start your free trial today?