Episode 40
Behind the Care: Making a Difference with Outcome Data

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Description

Our special guest, Joanna Conti joins us again in order to dive deeper into the importance of collecting treatment outcome data within addiction service centers.

Talking Points

1. A review of what outcome data looks like within addiction treatment and why it is so important
   
2. Our special guest, Joanna Conti reintroduces VistaResearch/Conquer Addiction and why she chose to grow a company based on outcome data
   
3. How Conquer Addiction is a unique addiction treatment directory and what makes it different from many others.
   
4. How many treatment centers are participating in outcome data research?
   

Quotes

“It’s an opportunity to engage in a platform that requires that we constantly edge forward and do the best possible care that we can and honor what those outcomes say, and the proof is in the pudding at the end of the day.”

Brandon Burns, CEO

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Episode Transcripts

Episode 40 Transcripts

hello everyone and welcome to uh what is at least 
to me here by myself an exciting episode uh here  
at finding peaks again uh my name is brandon burns 
chief executive officer for peaks recovery centers  
and um i just wanted to give you know to start 
this episode a friend of mine called earlier and  
her loved one unfortunately passed away from 
uh suicide and i just want to give a loving
embrace and regard for um that tragedy uh 
that took place in my friend’s life and just  
honor that and i think uh from there as well 
you know if you or a loved one is struggling  
from suicide you know addiction whatever the 
case might be you know reach out for help it’s  
never too soon to get ahead of the situation uh 
and to communicate those things and for those of  
you struggling out there we love you we care 
deeply and if there’s anything or way we can  
anything we can do or ways in which we can support 
you certainly reach out so that we can get you  
headed in the right direction in that regard and 
with that said i think that it’s very important  
in this regard to consider how to change these 
outcomes for our friends our families our loved  
ones and again today i’m joined by joanna conte 
who is the founder and chairman of the board  
for the not-for-profit vista research and conquer 
addiction and she’s joining me from the northeast  
today as she did last time from her home and 
uh we talked uh several episodes ago about  
vista research and what that is and kind of just 
a a quick recapitulation of that what it means for  
us as an addiction treatment center is that the 
moment an individual enters our treatment setting  
um they’re taking weekly surveys for which they 
can input you know anywhere from good to moderate  
to severe as far as how they’re experiencing their 
trauma as they come into care as they experience  
their depressive episodes addiction and so forth 
and this gives addiction treatment centers an  
opportunity to track individualized outcomes 
as they move through treatment and explore that  
through these surveys and then vista research does 
the next awesome job in all of this to follow up  
with patients uh post their recovery gender here 
within treatment at peaks recovery centers uh  
for the first 30 days a six month and then the 
outcomes look like long term and see where we can 
improve upon our processes within this journey  
and so uh that is one aspect of what they do 
and then they have this wonderful component  
called conquer addiction where they really get to 
take those outcomes exemplify treatment centers  
who are doing uh significant work and improving 
the direction of outcomes and highlight those  
opportunities so that family systems can turn 
and reasonably uh become attuned to treatment  
centers that are seeking at all times to really 
nurture these outcomes on behalf of their loved  
ones so that we can move into an arena for our 
industry of more transparency and greater insights  
into what treatment centers are actually doing 
and how they’re getting better at least in the  
direction of patient care so joanna that was a 
long-winded uh introduction but uh thanks for  
being here my pleasure brandon absolutely so 
diving right into this um you know with that  
if i missed anything in regards to vista 
research certainly highlight that for us but  
um what what led this you know from vista 
research to conquer addiction how did we get here  
well actually it went the other direction when 
i i got involved in addiction treatment and  
measuring outcomes because i had a daughter who 
was a very serious alcoholic and she was in and  
out of treatment for multiple years and i kept 
being put in the position where she’s in the uh  
she’s she’s in the hospital with 
a super high blood alcohol level  
and i know i need to find treatment for her 
immediately and i had no idea where to find  
the best a treatment i had you know i would call 
treatment centers and i would talk to admissions  
counselors and of course they were always so nice 
and i would say and what is your success rate  
and they would say you know trust me we’re one 
of the best or in a few cases i had uh owners  
tell me oh we have 98 success rate and stuff like 
that which we knew was absolute nonsense and so um  
when we were very fortunate and 
my daughter was able to find truly  
effective treatment and as a result she has now 
been in recovery for almost nine years and when  
the worst was behind me i said i need to find 
a way to help the other families find treatment  
that can really help their loved 
ones because we were very fortunate  
in being able to find effective treatment but it 
was sheer luck and so um the first thing i did  
was years after karina had you know begun to 
recover i was able to start a website that  
families could look at and would identify those 
treatment centers with the best proven outcomes  
in terms of research outcomes and i created that 
website back in 2015 and was horrified to discover  
that there were only five treatment centers 
in the entire us who were actually following  
up with their patients afterwards to determine if 
treatment had worked had they been able to recover  
and so having learned that this was something that 
almost no treatment centers were doing i started  
talking to treatment center owners and saying i 
don’t get this you are providing health care why  
are you not measuring and continually improving 
your effectiveness like the rest of healthcare  
and what i heard from enough treatment centers 
owners was you know they wanted to do so they  
just had no idea how to do it and that’s what had 
led me to start vista research group to provide um  
a easy to understand cost effective way to measure 
the effectiveness of different treatment centers  
and it wasn’t until we had been
working with treatment centers for oh let’s see 
over four years that realized that we now had  
enough treatment centers who were proving their 
success rates that it made sense to take this  
full circle and launch conquer addiction and 
you know as i said that’s what i that’s what  
it started this whole journey was wanting to help 
families find the treatment centers with the best  
proven independently verified success rates and 
we were absolutely thrilled last june june of 2020  
to be able to launch conquer addiction to 
help families find really good treatment  
yeah yeah absolutely it’s beautiful too to 
start with five and i think you guys are  
around 70 treatment centers now that you’re 
working with so that’s that’s yeah it’s it  
may not it you know there’s um there’s about 70 or 
more centers on conquer addiction not all of them  
are yet monitoring their outcomes or reporting 
their outcomes some because it’s they’ve recently  
started and others because they uh have not 
you know seen the advantages of measuring their  
outcomes yet so we’re still working on them so 
slow is the journey but an incredible uptick and  
i think that that inertia that you’ve created 
is certainly spotlighted you know competing  
forces of course against the backdrop of your 
um of the opportunities you’re doing but i i’m  
encouraged by you and conquer addiction and vista 
research being ahead of the game and seeing this  
for what it is and um so uh certainly applaud your 
guys’s effort in everything that you’re doing and  
now we’ve got all of these you know directories 
that exist around us rehabs.comrehab.com
and so forth that are trying to catalog in 
essence promote addiction treatment settings  
um you know for a fee at the end of the day 
but you know without me diving into sort of  
some of those aspects of it you know what makes 
conquer addiction in your opinion different than  
some of these other directory sites for why 
families should engage with your platform and  
not these others well the other directory sites 
that you’re referring to are for the most part  
businesses that are designed to make money 
by selling information about people who need  
treatment to treatment centers we don’t get 
involved in that at all this is a non-profit  
you don’t have to provide any information 
whatsoever to us you go to the conquer  
addiction website which is conquer dash addiction 
dot org and you enter what you’re looking for  
i want a residential treatment center that serves 
adults in colorado and i want it to be effective  
and i needed to take this insurance or that 
insurance you can specify things like um what type  
of special programs you’re interested in and 
that sort of thing and then what you’ll receive  
immediately up on your website or your phone 
or whatever is a list of treatment centers that  
meet your criteria and those with the best proven 
outcomes these are independently verified outcomes  
by conquer addictions team of judges they will 
appear at the top of the list and let’s say you’re  
interested in learning more about one of those 
treatment centers you’ll click through to the  
treatment center page you’ll learn more about what 
they specialize in maybe you’ll see a video or two  
and you can see the actual independently 
verified treatment effectiveness data  
you’ll see what percentage of the patients were 
reached and said that they were not using drugs  
or alcohol six months or 12 months after leaving 
treatment and what impact did treatment have  
on those individuals are they getting along 
better with their families are they living  
in a stable living environment or back working or 
going to school and are they feeling a lot better  
overall and also what how happy did they say they 
were with the treatment they received at that  
center one year later so all of this information 
must be provided directly from the patient  
and it is has to be provided with the patients 
being promised complete confidentiality so if  
somebody reports that they’re using or they’re 
unhappy with the treatment they provided  
they know it is not getting back to the treatment 
center except in summary form where their results  
are combined with those of lots of others and 
so um to be on conquer addiction um you don’t  
have to use vista’s research you just have to be 
following the standardized outcomes research a
format that has been specified 
by conqueror addictions judges  
and for a center to have a page on 
conquer addiction it costs 199 a year  
this is this is a this is my way and my daughter’s 
way who’s now joined me on the board of conquer  
addiction of giving back to the industry that 
saved her life and helping the families come  
along behind us to find treatment centers that are 
proving that they’re providing effective treatment  
absolutely and as somebody who you know uh 
certainly we work with you know vista research  
in regards to outcomes we’ve bravely put our brand 
on to conquer addiction as well too in that regard  
and um to you know from from my position it’s 
an opportunity um to engage in a platform that  
is requiring that we constantly edge forward 
and do the best possible care that we can  
and honor what those outcomes are and the proof 
is in the pudding um at the end of the day and i  
think it makes us not only stronger to be a part 
of that platform but i can certainly vouch for  
it is 200 to be on this platform where it 
can be thousands if not tens of thousands of  
dollars to be on other directory sites that 
are just simply not engaged with the same  
altruistic um behaviors and and and insights that 
uh conquer addiction is leading to so in that  
regard it is a very low cost but at the same time 
a wonderful transparent view of what centers in  
particular are doing to leading to the more robust 
outcomes i think in the last um you know vista  
research episode that we did together i think from 
uh uh treatment outcomes had remained flat and so 
in that regard we got to push each other and rub  
shoulders together to figure out a way to 
inch forward and make these better outcomes  
because as we all know the the opioid epidemic in 
the background is causing hundreds of thousands of  
lives lost at the same time of this pandemic and 
you know treatment centers are on the forefront of  
improving these outcomes for families at the end 
of the day and we just simply have to do better  
and be directional and focused about that so i 
think we we cut to it a little bit or maybe i was  
thinking about it in a different way but how 
many treatment center measure how many treatment  
centers measure their outcomes that you’re aware 
of if if not just within vista researches data but  
you know nationwide there’s 14 000 treatment 
centers so how many are you aware of that are  
actually participating in these outcomes it’s less 
than a hundred it is absolutely appalling this  
is health care this is health care you 
know if you if you just compare this to  
the improvement we’ve seen over the last 10 20 
other chronic diseases i mean the way 
they continually improve is that everyone  
tries different things they measure the 
how effective that treatment is they report  
that they learn from each other they do more 
of what works and less of what doesn’t work  
and i truly believe the absence of any independent 
measurement of the effectiveness of addiction  
treatment is the reason that one of one of the 
main reasons that we haven’t seen any improvement  
in 30 years yeah and it you know i i want 
to get on the bandwagon of tangents here  
you know with you as well too because i hear 
that number compared to the backdrop of the  
uh thousands of treatment centers that exist so 
for only a hundred to be participating in this is  
wildly incoherent against the 
backdrop of all other sides of  
medicine trying to improve their 
outcomes whether it’s oncology  
or cardiovascular disease and all these sort 
of fronts there’s vast amounts of research  
going into how to improve these outcomes and 
it’s just wild so why do you think there are so  
or you know from your experience why are 
there so few participants in this at this time
i think it’s there’s the early 
adopters the treatment centers  
like peaks that have started using it 
i think they are run by individuals who  
really deeply care about their patients and 
they want to do everything they possibly can  
to help their patients recover and because of 
that they are more committed to taking the risk  
of measuring how effective they really are one of 
the things that’s been very interesting to us is  
that because we have measured you know easily well 
over 100 different treatment centers effectiveness  
we’ve been able to see the dramatic range 
in effectiveness and while on average  
back in 1993 and still today about 36 of patients 
uh who leave addiction treatment and and we  
measure this among commercial addiction treatment 
centers we actually have very few medicaid or  
medicare or other publicly funded addiction 
treatment centers that are doing research  
at this point so i’m talking about those that 
predominantly take private insurance among those
we even though 36 percent on average of their 
patients are reachable and say they have not  
been using for at least the last 30 days at 
six months or a year post-treatment the range  
is between 18 and 50 percent and these are all 
highly respected treatment centers that started  
doing outcomes research because frankly 
they were positive that their outcomes  
would be much better than average and the 
fact is you can’t know what your outcomes are  
until you have independently measured 
them and been able to compare your results  
to a broad range of other treatment centers and 
there’s there’s everything that vista research  
does is entirely confidential to the treatment 
centers you know we report vista research group  
works for the treatment centers we report the 
results to the treatment centers we do performance  
improvement workshops and management reviews to 
help the treatment centers continually improve  
when they are proud of their results then they 
make the decision that i want to advertise them  
on conquer addiction and attract more patients 
to come to our center and share them with payers  
and so forth but there really isn’t a risk to 
the treatment centers in starting to measure it  
and what we found that’s so exciting is that among 
treatment centers that do measure their outcomes  
for more than a year they get better and 20 
more patients are in recovery the second year  
they’re measuring their outcomes i mean this is 
astounding this is a huge dramatic improvement for  
you know 25 000 a year or 40 000 a year investment 
i mean in doing research it’s it’s a tremendous  
return on investment and more importantly those 
are 20 more patients who are alive and thriving a  
year later because the treatment center was able 
to continually improve and that’s what really  
gets me up every morning to to 
keep moving forward on this project  
yeah absolutely it’s beautiful and it highlights a 
lot for me you know you know peaks recovery center  
started with this slogan of a caring recovery 
and i i think that you know my perspective about  
this caring notion is that there’s no doubt among 
the 14 000 treatment centers the vast majority of  
us care and we care a lot and i think you know 
that caringness had us in a sense believing  
that that would result in greater outcomes 
while the patient comes in sees us really caring  
you know for the individual then they’ll take that 
energy and they’ll get you know be well on the  
outside but in the absence of uh in the absence 
of being right there in front of us the world hits  
them in a variety of different ways and we’re not 
there to necessarily nurture it and that’s where  
the proof in the pudding and the work works and so 
in that regard i just want to honor the fact that  
this industry has to do more than just care caring 
is absolutely essential to the experience for the  
individual but what are we delivering as far as 
those services that will be meaningful beyond  
the walls of these treatment settings uh in that 
regard so uh a follow-up question to that is how  
can the listeners help change this those who are 
watching this episode you know today with us um  
what what what advice can you give them to 
you know really strong arm this industry to  
start really taking this seriously moving forward 
well anyone who is associated with the treatment  
center of course please bring this up bring up 
the importance of outcomes and please try and  
convince your management to start measuring your 
outcomes um use vista research group use someone  
else it doesn’t matter but it’s so important to 
do this but for someone who is listening to this  
who is on the other side who is a family member of 
someone who has may need treatment in the future  
or has needed treatment in the past or somebody 
who themselves are struggling with addiction  
i think the fastest way we can affect change is 
to demand that the treatment centers we attend  
do outcomes that you know if you’re talking to 
an admissions counselor and they’re telling you  
how wonderful their treatment center is and 
then they ask and what is your success rate  
or when you ask what is your success rate if they 
give you some oh we’re much better than average  
or they give you some nonsense like 90 of our 
patients are in recovery a year later which  
unfortunately is not true anywhere this 
is a very very it’s very very difficult  
to recover from addiction and people who 
were telling you 75 80 percent recovery rate  
they’re fooling themselves they’re reaching a 
tiny percentage of their patients maybe five  
or ten or fifteen percent of their patients and 
all of them are doing well but they’re not there  
and so they’re saying oh well if you know if 
if um if i reached out to a hundred patients  
and um you know i was able to talk to 20 
of them and 18 of the 20 are doing well  
then that means we have a 90 success rate well 
that’s not true because you didn’t talk to the  
other 80 so i don’t mean to um you know to try 
and dazzle everyone with with the math here  
but very simplistically you have to be able 
to reach a high percentage of the patients  
consistently to be able to truly track the success 
rates and by sending out a an email or two and  
asking people how are you doing you can’t do it 
you have to have a whole systematic approach to  
doing it so just to summarize if you are talking 
to a treatment center about sending your loved one  
there or going to that treatment center yourself 
please say i don’t get it why aren’t you tracking  
your success rate why can’t you tell me 
how effective your treatment center is  
and i truly believe that if admissions counselors 
start hearing that from even a small percentage of  
their prospective patients that they’re going to 
go to their treatment center owners and saying hey  
we’ve got to do this and i think that’s we can 
affect really rapid change in this industry if  
the consumers the people who are using addiction 
treatment band together and just demand outcomes  
yeah absolutely and i i think in a future you know 
episode with you i think we can do a real deep  
dive into some of the nuances and mechanics for um 
you know how to make all this true and as well too  
you know at the end of the day i think it would 
be uh wholly helpful for those addiction treatment  
centers that aren’t pursuing outcomes right now 
you get this tough question that joanna’s given  
the families to impose on your admissions team 
just to honor it and say that you’re right we do  
need to take this step forward it doesn’t mean 
you’re you don’t have positive outcomes because  
even if we’re hitting a baseline average 
of that 33 36 percent as an average outcome  
you’re still creating opportunities for family 
systems to get well and to be nurtured but how  
do we know and you know to build on that how do 
we know what we’re doing wrong if we’re not asking  
those questions and you know to the point as well 
too i fully believe in independent third parties  
you know vista research is data and everything 
that it’s done for peaks and it’s extraordinary  
and i say that because there was a time in which 
i thought oh i’m going to nurture this data myself  
and it should be an independent third party 
because what i realized in those moments is i can  
make this data whatever i want it to be in that 
regard for 200 i’m not paying joanna enough money  
to nurture that data on my behalf in that regard 
so it’s authentic in that way and would encourage  
that moving forward so final question for you um 
here and would certainly love to continue these  
opportunities to discuss these things with you 
but what else is conquer addiction doing to help  
more people recover moving forward what’s what’s 
the vision here all right well i’m really excited  
as i said that for the last two years we’ve 
been able to provide a database that people can  
go and search and find treatment centers that 
meet their needs with the most effective outcomes  
the second thing i’ve really been trying to 
do is to take all of this incredible data  
that we’ve been collecting and to summarize 
the learnings in plain english for people who  
who need to understand what they can do 
to improve the likelihood of recovery so  
for example one of the things we find 
is that if somebody goes to sober living  
for at least a month after residential treatment 
that they are much more likely to be in recovery  
six months or a year later well that’s a really 
important thing that families want to know  
because you know particularly today with 
the expansion of fentanyl and everything  
i mean it’s terrible but you may not get a second 
chance and you have to do everything you can  
to help your loved ones succeed 
with recovery and so we’re trying to  
provide information that families can 
use to increase the likelihood of success  
which with recovery but the other thing that we’re 
doing is i’m excited to say that i last summer  
i was able to create a research institute the 
conquer addiction research institute and attract  
a small board of experts in the industry to 
work together to help to solve or or or make  
progress anyway on some of the really biggest 
problems that are keeping people from recovering  
and so we have two different research projects 
that are well underway the first is a comparable
comparable outcomes research for mat 
centers versus abstinence-based centers and  
there are two very different worlds that we’ve 
we’ve learned of here they’re the people who  
believe that um uh the only way to get and stay 
sober or um in recovery is to give up forever all  
drugs and alcohol that’s what we refer to as 
abstinence-based the goal is total abstinence  
and then there’s another world of treatment 
that believes that the the secret is to go on  
medication and to stay on medication for a long 
period of time that helps you with your cravings  
and the fact is both of those types of treatment 
can be effective i believe they’re effective in  
perhaps different individuals but we don’t know 
enough to say when what type of of uh when should  
a patient use this type of treatment versus that 
type of treatment and there’s a lot of data that  
shows that for as long as somebody is is on their 
medication they are less likely to die but there’s  
also a lot of research that’s shown that a lot of 
people stop taking their medication as much as 30  
to 70 percent of the patients stop taking their 
medication in the first month alone and there is  
no research that’s followed up to find out what 
happens then so what we’re doing is we’ve raised  
a quarter of a million to do comparable research 
among medication assisted treatment centers  
to follow up with not just the the patients 
for as long as they remain in treatment  
but to follow up with patients after they leave 
treatment so we can look at the whole picture  
and because the research is very similar to that 
that we’re doing with abstinence-based treatment  
then we’ll be able eventually to start saying you 
know based on this patient’s drug use history and  
perhaps some other individual factors they’re more 
likely to be alive and thriving a year from now  
if they use this type of treatment versus that 
type of treatment and i’m really excited that  
we’ve raised the initial funding we’ve we’ve had 
a uh rfp out for outcomes research companies to  
um to uh propose how they would do this and i 
believe we’re going to be able to launch this  
um in the next couple of weeks so that’s one 
of the two projects i’m really excited about  
yeah beautiful uh that is awesome i think 
you know it seems binary medication assisted  
treatment versus abstinence-based treatment but 
what i what i’m my charitable reading of that  
is that we’re breaking through these kind 
of con these philosophies that and nowhere  
else in medicine do philosophies exist more than 
behavioral health well you need to do it this way  
you know go to the rooms you know get a sponsor 
that sort of thing uh 12 step it or you know just  
remain entirely abstinent post treatment for x 
y and z reasons or medication assisted treatment  
for these reasons but not those things can’t 
do those things um and in that way i think we  
we have to forcefully break through philosophies 
and get into standards of care that are effective  
not because we believe in them from you know some 
journey that maybe we went through independently  
but because the data shows that this is 
what’s necessary and true in that regard so  
um so it so for the sake of time because i i 
feel like you and me could just go on and on  
and on and i know we talked about additional 
questions to add to this but i want to get you  
uh back uh on this uh finding peaks with us in 
the future um so we can talk more about this  
roll through some of the uh nuances uh continue 
to talk about the success of your organization  
that’s fascinating that you got that quarter 
million dollars in funding to really highlight  
these next steps and opportunities to punch 
through more of these industry philosophies  
that you know who knows whether or not they’re 
making a lot of sense in that regard so  
so for the sake of time we’ll cut 
it out here but joanna thank you  
so much for being on here for being patient 
with us here on the studio side of things  
i know it took a while to get this going 
uh you are a saint and thank you so much
thank you so much brandon thank you for 
all you’re doing and thanks so much for  
um for your interest in our work yeah 
absolutely joanna and so again everybody  
uh founder and chairman of the board of 
vista research and conqueror addiction  
joanna conte doing wonderful work alongside 
her daughter as well too doing big things  
out there on the northeast coast and across the 
nation on behalf of addiction treatment centers  
for everybody tuning in with us right now 
finding peaks at peaksrecovery.com if there’s  
more that you know we can ask questions in the 
direction of joanna that you’re curious about  
submit those questions and we’ll get those 
answered in a future episode you know look for us  
on the facebook uh the social medias the twitters 
the tick tocks all those big things and until next  
time everybody uh brandon barnes brandon burns 
here signing out and we’ll see you next time