Treatment Program Success Rates? Fact and Fiction

Queries from clients about a programs’ success rate have become common for counselors serving at Miramar. The company has produced an effective statistical growth rate of its products and services. Although this perception is correct when it comes to limited products and items, the existing complications in providing behavioral health care affects the statistical growth rate immensely. As the part of management of a respected addiction treatment center, I am occasionally surprised to find treatment centers projecting high success rates. In fact, some have claimed to have success rates as phenomenal as 87.2 or 91.7 percent according to some sources. This is ridiculous and quite negligent.

In the field of drug rehabilitation, measuring the success rate is impracticable for various reasons. In fact, there is no uniformed definition, tool or protocol to measure the success rate of addiction treatment centers. If there are no tools then who defines what a high ‘success’ rate means in the addiction treatment sector? Alcohol treatment centers that have created their own definition of what is successful in this sector are being self serving and deceiving.

Due to complications and existing biases, there are no particular measuring patterns for success in the addiction treatment sector. There are several questions in the industry that are still without answers. Another feature that makes measuring success rate in the addiction treatment sector a questionable and imprecise process is the method of collecting the data and the way they are processed. Clients often change phone numbers, their email addresses, and other associative ways of communication which makes it difficult to keep an ongoing dialogue with the patients. Lastly, the accuracy of the data collection is questionable as well. With such limitations and deficiencies, it is quite deceptive to project success rates in deaddiction sector. Hence, it is would be in the best interest of the patient to be wary of the success rates is projected by an addiction treatment provider.