Although millions of Americans need treatment for substance abuse, beds in rehab centers continue to sit empty, and deaths from substance use disorder continues to rise. Why is this still happening, and is there a better way to reach those who need help?
Why Patients Are Slipping Through the Cracks
Patients are not receiving the addiction treatment they need for several reasons.
No Direct Line to Needed Treatment
Individually, hospitals and crisis centers are limited in what they can do to treat those experiencing the symptoms associated with addiction, but, once released, patients are more or less on their own.
Without further treatment from a qualified rehab, individuals can quickly end up back at a hospital or crisis center or, worse, succumb to their addiction. Unfortunately, rehabs simply don’t have many direct means of communicating with emergency rooms and crisis centers. There is no direct line in to provide a daily update of bed and services availability. Hospitals are too busy frankly, to take those calls.
Difficulty Finding the Right Rehab
A patient struggling with addiction after leaving a hospital or crisis center must try to locate the right rehab in a sea of potential centers. Social workers have the same problem; the sheer numbers of rehabs, coupled with what seems to be a chronic lack of resources, make the job of finding help seem impossible.
Lack of Reliable Marketplace
The lack of direct communication between rehabs, social workers, and clinicians leaves those looking for help or trying to help with no choice but to sift through potentially hundreds of centers. This can quickly lead to the overwhelm and abandonment of search efforts that can cause individuals to go without treatment and for rehab beds to remain empty.
However, with a two-sided marketplace approach to patient management and addiction treatment, a connection can be made, beds can be filled, and more patients can be helped.
What’s Needed for Effective Addiction Treatment?
Effective addiction treatment can be administered when the following are in place:
- The ability for advocates to triage and assess, which doesn’t require phone calls, and that can be accessed and used online
- The ability to verify a patient’s insurance and/or estimate any out-of-pocket costs
- The ability to not only match a patient to a rehab facility and book them, but also offer rehabs a marketing strategy that speaks directly to their patient advocates
In addition to the above characteristics of effective addiction treatment, all of these need to be easy to use and not require long periods of time or any software implementation for advocates to achieve.
The Benefits of Streamlining Your Access to Patient Leads
Rehabs can benefit from being a part of the recovery network created by the RecoverWell platform. Rehabs are matched directly to patients who fit their services so patients are never connected to rehabs that cannot meet their needs.
Advocates can know that all of the rehabs revealed by RecoverWell are well-matched to the needs of their existing patients. Time saved can translate directly to serving the needs of pre-verified patients.
When advocates are able to use one tool that matches patients with the ideal facility, those individuals can experience improved outcomes at your rehab.
As well, the right solution will highlight your facility as one that’s been vetted for its high quality. This can help you to attract new patients, ultimately increasing the number of people you help.
How to Bring More Patients to Your Practice
The lack of a central hub that links patients and addiction treatment centers is increasing the number of patients who go without help, but, thankfully, a platform exists that aims to transform healthcare marketing by helping to fill the beds in your facility.
Patient advocates can use RecoverWell to connect their patients with treatment centers in the marketplace. They enter patient information with regard to their clinical and financial needs. The platform’s algorithm then returns treatment facility matches based on criteria that include substances being used, level of care required, and patient budget.
All rehab centers in the database are put through a strict qualifying process to ensure they are licensed to provide high-quality service. We monitor all centers in our database on an ongoing basis in order to ensure their continued eligibility. This ensures that the marketplace is fair and ethical.
What does this mean for your rehab center? Patient advocates that use our platform can be confident that only those rehab centers who have met our detailed criteria will appear in the search results. This allows them to be confident about choosing your facility as an ideal option for potential patients.
Rehabs can be sure patient advocates contacting their facility have also gone through the vetting process to ensure a high standard of integrity and continued eligibility. Finally, your practice benefits from an online presence, allowing you to grow your practice. This benefits both your local community, as well as the areas which lie beyond.
Discover more about the many benefits of partnering with our rehabilitation network platform by signing up for a product demonstration here (link to the typeform flow)
