Bloomberg donated $50 million to fight the Opioid Epidemic. What does that mean for your sober living or treatment center?
A few weeks ago, Michael Bloomberg announced that he was dedicating a portion (small portion!) of his wealth to the opioid epidemic. Bloomberg will be doling out the money to philanthropies who will be giving the money to existing programs. Pennsylvania was one of the states mentioned in many articles that will be receiving over $10 million. Bloomberg is hopeful that a “comprehensive strategy” to fighting this epidemic will come to light and can be used across all the states.
So what does all this mean for you? How will you be able to capture some of this money?
Start collecting data and outcomes about your programs!
I suspect that the way states will decide who to give the money to is to the programs that have a proven track record and can show the data to back up their program.
Here are some tips on how to start collecting data and outcomes about your program
Decide on what metrics you want to track
Every program is different so you should sit down as a team and decide what metrics you want to track. Some common data points that facilities are looking at
- # of successes during your program (how many people didn’t relapse while they were at your facility?)
- % of discharges who are employed upon discharge
- % of discharges on MAT
- # of successes post-program (no re-admission to another facility within 6 months of going through your program)
It is important to stay consistent. Figure out what payers and funding sources are looking for from you, and start tracking those metrics today. As for previous admits and discharges, if you have time to go back and enter all your paper intake and discharge forms into an electronic system, do it. If you don’t have time, at least start entering everything electronically today!
Use One Step or any other platform to keep track of all your program data
It is very hard to use paper forms to come up with aggregate data for your program. At the very least, use an Excel spreadsheet but there are better programs out there.
One Step is a great tool for sober livings and treatment centers to keep track of everything about your patients with relation to outcomes and data collection. If you are a treatment center that uses an EMR, simply export the data and import it into One Step, or ask us about an integration with your EMR. Chances are we are partners with your EMR or can do the integration for you!
Use One Step or another platform to keep track of all your post-program data
One Step automatically pulls data from your patient profiles and aggregates it for you so that you can see outcomes data on the program level. The aggregation is most effective for programs that have the most data. Programs must start investing in collecting and updating patient profiles so that their profile is a living document, as opposed to a profile that ends once the patients are discharged
Follow up with your alumni
In order to keep up with the profiles and information about your patients once they are discharged, you need to invest in alumni support. Many programs at least have an alumni coordinator, some programs have a department for Alumni Relations. Many programs also outsource the alumni outreach to One Step. One Step is able to collect more data and metrics about your alumni than average due to our proprietary mobile app and outreach methodology. Start investing in contacting alumni today!
If you are interested in having One Step help you collect outcomes data on your program, please fill out the contact form below!