Improve Patient Outcomes Using Holistic Treatment Methods

Treating patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) can be costly for centers that focus on addiction and recovery. This is especially true when these healthcare facilities see the same patients repeatedly.

As medical costs rise, the best way to improve these outcomes is to address underlying medical conditions while simultaneously treating the SUD. By treating the conditions simultaneously, treatment centers and healthcare facilities will see more positive patient outcomes.

The best practice is a holistic approach with coordinated services.

Value of Treating Behavioral Health First

Each patient who takes the first step to enter a treatment facility is different, from their background to their underlying conditions to their income and any additional resources or support. Therefore, organizations should not use the same formula to treat each patient.

This is why identifying and treating behavioral health conditions and treating any SUD concurrently saves both time and money. While it can take several weeks to identify a particular underlying mental health issue—bipolar disorder, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, etc.—those weeks are important to see the most impactful patient outcomes.

Treating behavioral health conditions requires coordinating services, including:

• Medical: Allow a medical professional time to properly identify an underlying issue. Misdiagnosis and treatment with the wrong medication can lead to relapse in SUDs.
• Counseling: Licensed counselors can help patients work through behavioral issues that come with depression, anxiety, grief, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more. By properly addressing these conditions and their aftermath, patients can see better outcomes through therapy.
• Community: A community for a patient with an addiction often includes friends and family members who are also addicted. By creating a balanced integration of services, including individual and group counseling, family therapy, support groups, resume building, housing assistance and more, patients are able to create a community of support.
• Recovery: When patients are paired with a “certified recovery specialist,” they can see a vision of success. Each recovery specialist can draw from their experience of addiction and recovery to draw a parallel of empathy, encouragement, and support.

This integrated treatment approach addresses each patient’s needs instead of treating them with a predefined prescription with the hope that relapse doesn’t occur.

Facing Critical Barriers to Treatment

The treatment of patients through a holistic approach is often met with variations on the theme: “Here’s why we can’t do that.”

Among those variations:

• Stigma: Stigmas can range from cultural to familial to industrywide. Many cultures view addiction and mental health as a personality disorder rather than a behavioral disorder, developing a stigma that reduces a patient’s chances and desire to seek treatment. In addition, some family members resist helping a patient who needs treatment because they feel they have failed as a parent, sibling, or friend by “letting” the SUD happen and fester in the first place.
• Insurance: Some private and public insurance plans have high premiums for members who choose to see multiple physicians and doctors—such as psychiatrists or therapists—making coordinated care costly.
• Prior Misdiagnosis: A patient with bipolar disorder who has been misdiagnosed with depression may find that any medication used to treat depression only can exacerbate bipolar disorder and worsen any addiction. These misdiagnoses can also cause mistrust of the medical community that assigned a patient a syndrome based on a single observation rather than conducting a full diagnosis.

Removing Critical Barriers for Care Coordination

One positive improvement throughout the industry is the acceptance that SUDs are caused by a disease and not a personality trait. By educating the nation through awareness campaigns, like “Mental Health Awareness Month,” and openly discussing issues such as suicide, we have transferred a dark subject into the light of public discussion.

This identification and awareness translate into improved treatments covered by insurance. In the cost-benefit analysis, it is cheaper for an insurance company—private or public—to pay for treatment through coordinated services once rather than to pay for long-term hospital stays.

The California Health Care Foundation, for example, reported that payments to treatment centers increased from 1986 through 2020, as reliance on centers over hospitals for treatment has become more accepted.

Finally, it is critical to realize that addressing proper diagnosis is vital to proper care. This is best achieved through the holistic approach of coordinated care services. When realizing the need to treat the individual rather than assign treatment based on initial impression, care plans can lead to improved treatment and a reduction in a revolving door of needs.

Patients who engage with multiple care providers under one roof have better outcomes because they can address a multitude of needs. From behavioral disorders to SUDs to hepatitis C or any other medical need, patients who are treated as a whole person are more likely to continue treatment because they can see the positive outcomes.

Anna Gaddy is the senior vice president of Behavioral Healthcare Services at CleanSlate Centers.

The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Addiction Professional, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.