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The field of substance use disorder treatment is going through a period of tremendous upheaval.  Despite the high need for their services, 23% of addiction treatment providers in a small, informal study reported being concerned about their ability to remain in business.

When the first J.D. Power surveys of car quality came out, the leaders of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler all wasted many years questioning the research methodology and pooh-poohing its findings.  As Vista releases the first independent addiction treatment outcomes research in decades, we can’t afford the same kind of hubris.  When addiction treatment fails, people die

Over the last 2½ years, Vista has attempted to contact more than 2,000 addiction treatment patients to learn how they’re doing post-treatment.  As we’ve grown, we’ve learned that several factors have a strong impact on our ability to connect with the patients.

Leading addiction treatment organizations are moving quickly to use patient data to improve treatment effectiveness and reporting the following key benefits: 

Vista Research Group held two Outcomes Summits for our addiction treatment clients this year.  In addition to being a heck of a lot of fun (really!), we’ve learned several interesting things:

As we analyzed treatment completion data for Vista’s first Outcomes Summit last week, we were surprised by the wide range of treatment completion rates among our clients.  Among short-term residential treatment programs, for example, the percentage of patients who successfully completed treatment ranged between 43% and 97%.

By monitoring the severity of underlying co-occurring disorders, progress monitoring has proven to help patients in addiction treatment get better faster.  But deeply-uncomfortable patients in the throes of acute withdrawal may find it difficult to answer detailed questions.

John Oliver aired a devastating expose of the addiction treatment industry Sunday night on his show Last Week Tonight.  How should the industry respond?