President, East Point Behavioral Health
Michael J. Wilson Jr., CIP, CFI, is President of East Point Behavioral Health and author of "Loving Lions: A Guide for Families Struggling With Addiction." He writes on behavioral health operations, family engagement, and the technology treatment centers run on.
eastpointbehavioralhealth.comlovinglions.comcrediblelearning.com
Forty to sixty percent of people treated for a substance use disorder return to use within a year, on par with hypertension and asthma. NIDA calls relapse a prompt to re-engage care, not proof of failure. Most treatment software stops paying attention at discharge, and that gap is where recovery is won or lost.
Your dashboard says you billed $2 million. Nobody pays billed. The numbers that matter are what payers allowed, what you actually collected against it, and what is still expected, and when. Most systems show you the big, flattering figure and hide the three that run the business.
Most treatment centers run daily operations across three or four disconnected tools that don't talk to each other. All the re-keying between them is where staff time, referral revenue, and software adoption disappear. The clinical record usually works fine. The operations around it are the problem.