In our work with addiction and recovery (or rehabilitation) providers it’s very apparent how vital a role their solutions play when it comes to balancing patient and business needs.
- Centering those solutions in the patient journey and ensuring they meet the industry-specific demands of addiction and recovery providers is at the core of striking that balance.
For the providers we’ve partnered with, achieving this usually begins with a combination of Salesforce Health Cloud and clinical integrations — as centralization of both a solution and processes in the patient journey begins with centralizing data.
Concrete data = a clearer picture of the patient journey and how it aligns with organizational activity, making it easier to build out your solution and processes in the right way for both your patients and business — ultimately improving patient outcomes.
In this blog we’ll be sharing some key observations about why this is important, break down the patient journey into discrete points, and walk you through how it can be achieved.
Unique Needs and a Rising Demand for Services
The provider relationship with addiction and recovery patients is somewhat unique, in that each and every point on that patient’s journey is not only meaningful in terms of life or death situations for patients, it’s also directly tied to revenue and business development. The more growth providers are able to achieve, the more they’re able to positively impact patients, their loved ones, and the communities they serve.
The need for that impact continues to grow.
For those who work within the industry, this comes as no surprise. The dramatic rise in demand for addiction and recovery services being seen today is predicted to continue to increase over the next several years, with the Global Addiction Rehab market being projected to reach 26.7 billion USD by 2032.
- This is in part thanks to more patients having access to treatment due to legislation like the Affordable Care Act — which has helped to expand insurance coverage for mental and behavioral health, as well as substance use disorder treatment.
Despite a greater need for services, the industry remains intensely competitive.
To cope with this, a provider’s solution and processes need to be set up to handle patient volume and needs efficiently, to create an appealing and effective experience for patients. This brings us back to balancing patient and business needs by centering their solution in the patient journey.
Centering Your Solution in the Patient Journey
When partnering with addiction and recovery providers to center their solutions in the patient journey we’ve found it helpful to break that journey into 3 distinct categories: outreach and engagement, admissions and treatment, and post-treatment and ongoing (alumni) support.
Solution needs will always vary on a case-by-case basis, but the following steps are a great way to get started:
1. Start with the basics. Line up your existing solution components with the 3 categories discussed above:
- Outreach and Engagement - solutions for initial contact and relationship building up to the point of admissions or when outpatient treatment begins. These solutions often help add, support, or manage top-of-funnel/revenue/care opportunities.
- For example: marketing, campaigns, patient communication and messaging, call centers, referral management, pre-admission intake processes and screenings, benefits verification.
- Admissions and Treatment - solutions for facility or program admissions throughout the treatment process. These solutions often support, manage, and elevate patient care.
- For example: bed management, intake, care coordination, treatment plans, provider messaging, support team communication and updates, ongoing testing or screening.
- Post-Treatment and Ongoing (Alumni) Support - solutions for outpatient or less intensive ongoing treatment, transitioning care, and alumni and care team support. These solutions often help manage and support short- and long-term patient success, as well as add to or support alumni-sourced top-of-funnel/revenue/care opportunities.
- For example: patient communication and messaging, alumni referral management, patient and care team resources, alumni and community engagement.
2. Get connected and centralize data. Disconnected systems mean disconnected data points and an inability to understand exactly where improvements need to happen, which ultimately impacts quality of care throughout all aspects of the patient journey.
- For example, centralization through a solution like Health Cloud and EHR (e.g., Kipu Health, AdvancedMD, etc.) integration helps:
- Establish a 360° view of the patient journey and a single source of truth from the initial point of contact through treatment and ongoing alumni engagement.
- It also connects workflows between operational processes like admission/discharge, for example, prescribed medications in the context of care management.
- Aside from gaining a more complete view of the patient journey, getting connected also allows for standardization and collection of accurate metrics, as well as simplified tracking and reporting.
3. Identify priorities from both a business and patient’s perspective.
- Outreach and Engagement - examples of questions to pinpoint areas for improvement:
- Are you concentrating on the right marketing efforts to optimize patient outreach and awareness of services?
- Are your screenings, insurance verification, and scheduling processes maximized for efficiency?
- Are you able to tie back initiatives and processes to business development as well as the patient journey?
- Can you accurately identify referral resources?
- Are intake processes standardized?
- What boundaries are blocking patients from getting care (i.e., are communication and calls being missed, how much effort is required for patients to receive treatment, etc.)?
- How much lost revenue is tied to those boundaries?
- Admissions and Treatment - examples of questions to pinpoint areas for improvement:
- How long does the admission process take?
- What is the patient experience like during treatment and is there an effective way to manage sentiment throughout?
- Do processes like bed management require manual effort, and if so, how much time is required to complete these processes?
- Are providers and resources able to easily coordinate care?
- Are care plans and instructions easy to follow and manage?
- Are patient records and information displayed in a way that optimizes patient care?
- If the patient has an outside support or care team, how easy is it to supply updates or information in a HIPAA compliant way?
- Post-Treatment and Ongoing (Alumni) Support - examples of questions to pinpoint areas for improvement:
- How easy is it to coordinate post-treatment care?
- Can alumni progress be easily measured?
- Is alumni referral management in place?
- How is alumni, care/support team, and community outreach being managed to maximize alumni success rates?
- Is there an alumni network in place for communication and group support?
- Is it easy to access information when needed?
4. Create a roadmap for solution upgrades based on those needs. Determine what areas will have the most impact and improvement from automation, standardization, personalization, and best practices before investing in system improvements.
- Differentiate from where improvements to your existing solution are needed vs. upgrading various solution components.
Listed below you’ll find some solution examples linked to a pain point that the solution can address. Again, solutions will always vary on a case-by-case basis — and it’s important to keep in mind that all of these solutions can be adapted to meet multiple patient and organizational needs — including the priorities you may have identified in section 3.
- Outreach and Engagement
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement can be used to reduce fear or logistical barriers to admission for prospective patients through education and personalized communication.
- Salesforce Digital Engagement can help meet patients where they are, giving them more options for communication, while streamlining communication processes.
- Integrated referral management, including time saving AI functionality, can help with referral tracking, while improving efficiency and eliminating manual processes.
- Automated telephony solutions like Salesforce Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect or Vonage can help integrate the call center experience into Salesforce, to standardize and enhance qualification, triage, and pre-admission processes.
- Integration of 3rd-party solutions like VerifyTreatment to ensure the right information is captured, patients are triaged appropriately, and benefits are verified quickly to avoid delays in admission.
- Admissions and Treatment
- Salesforce Health Cloud is highly configurable — Kicksaw has a custom Bed Management application that takes advantage of this, for integrated and streamline bed management.
- Standardized Patient Intake Flows within Health Cloud can reduce friction throughout the patient journey and streamline assessments.
- EHR integration can help create 360° Care Management within Salesforce for complete patient views, including patient charts, timelines for their treatment plan and anticipated discharge dates.
- Slack integration can be used to provide HIPAA-compliant care coordination; while Health Cloud is used to provide overall care management, Slack helps with collaboration to improve patient outcomes.
- Post-Treatment and Ongoing (Alumni) Support
- Salesforce Einstein Bots and Knowledge Articles can be used to help alumni, their support team, or community members quickly find information or get answers to questions.
- Alumni and care/support team portals via Salesforce Experience Cloud can provide easy and HIPAA-compliant access to resources that help with patient success.
- Health Cloud Integrated Care Management can be used to develop personalized actions and interventions — and extend the continuum of care for patients during one of the most critical stages of the addiction and recovery patient journey.
Next Steps
Kicksaw is incredibly passionate about helping addiction and recovery providers improve operational processes, with a focus on elevating patient care, so they can help people through some of the darkest times of their lives — providing life-saving outcomes for patients and impactful change for patients, their loved ones, and their communities.
Centering solutions in the patient journey is a key part of that process.
Please feel free to reach out to our team with any questions or for solution assistance.
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