July 1, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of ShiftShapers, host David A. Saltzman speaks with Joanna Conti, founder and chairman of the nonprofit Conquer Addiction. Joanna’s journey began when her own daughter faced life-threatening alcoholism, prompting a years-long search for effective treatment—and an urgent realization: no one was measuring long-term success.
Joanna shares the results of her groundbreaking research following over 100,000 addiction patients, and exposes the massive gaps in transparency, accountability, and outcomes in today’s treatment centers. She also unveils how employers and families can now access verified recovery data to choose truly effective care—and how a new bundled care model is reshaping the rehab industry.
Conquer Addiction Website: https://conquer-addiction.org
🤖 Sponsored by BenePower
BenePower is an AI-powered platform helping advisors build high-impact, self-insured health plans quickly and seamlessly. By integrating best-in-class point solutions and eliminating inefficiencies, BenePower reduces costs, improves member outcomes, and positions advisors as industry leaders.
🔗 Learn more at BenePower.com
🔑 Key Takeaways from This Episode
📌 Most Treatment Centers Don’t Track Outcomes
Joanna explains why fewer than 1% of rehabs conduct post-treatment follow-ups—and how Conquer Addiction is changing that.
📌 Verified Success Rates Vary Widely
While the average recovery rate is 36%, Joanna’s research shows some centers achieve 50%+ and others less than 15%.
📌 Aligning Incentives with Accountability
New bundled-rate models require rehabs to offer relapse support—creating better outcomes and real transparency.
📌 Employers Bear the Cost
Substance use disorders can cost employers $25,000 per year per employee—before treatment even begins.
📌 A National Claims-Based Registry Is Coming
Joanna’s team is building a predictive model using de-identified claims data to rank treatment center effectiveness nationwide.
📌 Hope and Progress
Joanna’s personal story ends with hope: her daughter is thriving after 13 years in recovery—and now four kids of her own.
⏱️ In This Episode
00:00 Introduction to Treatment Duration and Outcomes
13:59 Accessing Treatment Center Data
14:31 Challenges in the Treatment Industry
14:51 Aligning Incentives for Better Outcomes
16:32 Financial Struggles of Treatment Centers
16:58 Using Data to Identify Effective Treatment Centers
17:56 The Role of Compliance and Legislation
18:35 Developing a National Claims Registry
19:28 Predictive Modeling for Treatment Effectiveness
20:40 Sharing Data with Rehabs and Payers
21:42 Future Goals and Conclusion
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's been estimated that 8% of employees have a
moderate to severe addiction toalcohol and drugs, and that an
addicted employee can cost theiremployer $25,000.
What could make that problemeven worse and what can be done
to help resolve those issues?
We'll find out on this episodeof Shift Shapers.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Change either energizes or paralyzes.
The choice is yours.
This is the Shift Shaperspodcast, bringing the employee
benefits industry interviewswith individuals and companies
who are shaping the industryshifts.
And now here's your host, davidSaltzman.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And to help us answer that question, we've invited
Joanna Conte.
She is the founder and chairmanof the board at Conquer
Addiction.
Welcome, Joanna.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, thank you, david, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Pleasure is completely and totally all ours.
So let's start out with a greatstarting point.
Like a number of our guestsover the years, you ended up
doing what you're doing becauseof a personal story that
happened.
Would you be willing to sharethat with us?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yes, I would.
So I had a teenage daughter whodeveloped a really severe
alcoholism and she would drinknight after night to levels that
could potentially kill her.
She would just guzzle vodkauntil she would pass out or
(01:29):
whatever.
When we realized how severe itwas, it was after a couple of
car accidents and airlifts toshock trauma and so forth.
It started a six-year journeyfor us to try and find her
effective treatment and duringthose six years she was in and
(01:49):
out of different treatmentprograms.
I kept finding myself in acrisis situation where I would
have to make basically a lifeand death decision about where
to send Karina for treatment,and I wasn't able to make it on
the basis of hard data, sayingthis treatment center was
particularly effective and thisone wasn't.
Each time I was forced to makethis decision on the basis of
(02:16):
how nice somebody was on thephone.
We were incredibly lucky andafter six years we usually found
effective treatment and, as aresult, my daughter has now been
in recovery for 13 years andhas completely turned her life
around, is actually in the nextcouple of weeks expecting her
(02:37):
fourth little girl and has awonderful career traveling the
country and so forth.
So we've been incrediblyblessed, traveling the country
and so forth.
So we've been incrediblyblessed.
But when the worst was behindme, I said there's got to be a
way for the families comingbehind us to find effective
treatment.
The system is broken.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So let's forward that into the employer arena, which
is where most of our audiencelives.
They're mostly folks who areclient-facing and help employers
make decisions and deal withrisks just like this.
That $25,000 before an employeegoes to treatment is a stat
that you and I talked about inour pre-interview.
(03:18):
Where does that come from?
What drives those costs?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
that come from?
What drives those costs?
So, first of all, this is allof the research that my company
has created.
I've spent the last 10 yearsmonitoring over 100,000 patients
during addiction treatmentacross the US and also following
up post-treatment, through thepost-treatment year, with over
40,000 patients who were intreatment for addiction to see
(03:48):
how they're doing one, six and12 months later.
And what we found throughfollowing up with those patients
, monitoring them duringtreatment and following up with
them them afterwards, is that inthe year before they come to
treatment, the average patientwill have ER visits and
(04:11):
unplanned hospital stays anddetox treatments that will total
, on average, about $25,000 inthat pre-treatment year.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
That's before you factor in absenteeism, treatment
year.
That's before you factor inabsenteeism, presenteeism and
all the other isms that are kindof soft costs.
Let's call them right.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, and there's one other really large cost, and
that is that other research hasshown not ours, but other
research has shown that if youhave a patient that also has a
mental health disorder and anaddiction, it'll cost three to
four times as much to treat anyof their other physical
conditions.
So we already know diabetes isvery expensive for employers.
(04:54):
If you have an employee withdiabetes that also has a
substance use disorder, it'sgoing to cost you three to four
times more on average to treatthem than if they didn't have
either.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So, going back to something that you said, and we
kind of trace your journey alittle bit, choosing a provider
based on how nice the person whoanswered the phone happened to
be on that given day, on thatgiven moment, on that given
phone call, is probably not thebest way.
Were there no other assetsavailable to you, and what have
(05:29):
you been working on since?
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Well, what was so frustrating was I would ask the
salespeople.
I'd say well, what is yoursuccess rate?
And I invariably got one of twoanswers Either they told me it
was simply impossible to measurehow effective treatment was, or
they made up some number.
They would say oh, 80%, 85% ofour patients are in recovery one
(05:51):
year later, which, as much aswe would all like to believe
that it's absolute nonsense,addiction is a chronic disease.
Our research shows that onlyabout 36% of patients will be
not using drugs or alcohol oneyear later.
It's very difficult to recoverfrom addiction, and so you know,
(06:13):
there was no real informationout there that I could use to
make a decision andunfortunately, 20 years later,
not much has changed.
I guess it has been quite.
It's been about 17 years andthe situation is the same.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So what are you to do , whether you're a parent or a
caregiver or a paternalisticemployer or just somebody who is
a friend and wants to help?
What options are out there?
Has anything gotten better?
Is there any more informationabout quality and outcomes and
all of that stuff available?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
There is some.
That's what I've spent the last10 years focusing on.
My research company, as I said,has monitored over 100,000
patients during treatment andfollowed up with over 40,000 of
them afterwards, and what wehave found is that there's a
tremendous variation in theeffectiveness of different
rehabs.
While the average is that 36%of patients will be doing well
(07:16):
one year later, it goes all theway from over 50% at some rehabs
of their patients are doingwell a year later to less than
15% at other rehabs, and theproblem is you can't tell which
is which by looking at thepretty pictures on the website.
And so what my daughter and Ihave done is create a nonprofit
(07:37):
called Conquer Addiction, whereour goal is to help the families
and employers to find moreeffective treatment, and so what
we've done is treatment centerswho have proven that at least
40% or more of their patientsare in recovery one year after
treatment.
They are on the ConquerAddiction website with a
(08:01):
five-star rating.
Their actual research resultsare there so that people can see
for themselves the impact thatattending that treatment center
has had on patients through athird-party independent research
company, and they can contactthat treatment center if they're
interested in considering goingthere and then that's been
(08:25):
there for about five years.
Most recently, we took it to thenext level and created a market
of truly effective treatmentcenters where we asked treatment
centers that could prove that ahigh percentage of their
patients were in recovery oneyear later.
We asked them to create anall-inclusive bundled rate
(08:46):
payment bundled rate payment foran episode of care and you know
everything would be included.
There would be no surprises.
But what is so cool about whatwe've done with this market is
we've also required to be partof the market that if a patient
(09:07):
completes treatment at one ofthese treatment centers and they
relapse within the 90 daysafter they complete treatment,
that the center agrees to takethem back into treatment for at
least 20, 21 days on their owndime.
So we've aligned the incentives.
Everyone the patient, the payer, the rehab are all aligned
(09:34):
identically, with the focusbeing on how do we help this
patient recover.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
And now a word from our sponsor.
You're not just an advisor,you're a game changer.
Forget cookie-cutteroff-the-shelf solutions.
That's yesterday's news, it's2025, and it's all about
delivering bold, custom-craftedplans that truly make a
difference.
At the core is a razor-sharpself-insured framework, but the
(10:03):
real magic that's in thehigh-impact point solutions.
You strategically layer in toslash costs and supercharge
member outcomes.
But let's be real, that's wherethe headaches start Hours
wasted sifting through endlessoptions, wrestling with
integration issues and fightingdata-sharing roadblocks.
(10:24):
It's a time suck and it'sholding you back Not anymore.
Meet Benapower, the AI-poweredgame changer that builds killer
plans in minutes, not hours.
Benapower doesn't just curatethe best point solutions.
It makes them work togetherseamlessly, streamlining
communication and drivingcollaboration like never before.
(10:45):
With Benapower, you're armedwith an end-to-end AI-enabled
solution that makes youunstoppable.
Spend less time piecingtogether a patchwork plan and
more time selling your clients.
Get unmatched ROI and youbecome the go-to advisor that
everyone's talking about.
Want to take your game to thenext level?
(11:06):
Visit benapowerai or schedule ademo at info at benapowercom.
Find your power with Benapower.
And now back to ourconversation.
How frequent are relapses inthe first 90 days?
Is that something that happensall the time, or do you have any
(11:28):
statistics around that?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yes, well, as I said, only 36% of patients are in
recovery one year later, asdefined as meeting their drug
and alcohol treatment goals, andof the patients that are not in
recovery, the majority of themwill probably relapse in the
first 30 days.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yeah, it's scary.
This is a terrible disease.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Well, and it's multivariate.
So I was going to go back towhen you started looking into
the problem and you startedtrying to quantify these results
.
There's so many variables.
Are you at the point, even with100,000 cases that you've
looked at, are you at the pointwhere you can make any kind of
(12:16):
conclusions about what makes oneprogram successful and another
program maybe less so?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
We can definitely say a number of things in very
general terms.
I mean, there is some truth thataddiction is an art.
It is partly science, I'm sure,but it is also an art.
How well does the therapistconnect with the patient, help
them resolve whatever the issuesthat are making them drink or
(12:44):
drug to oblivion?
You know that takes a veryspecial person to be able to do
that, but in general what we cansay is the longer a patient is
in treatment, the higher thelikelihood is that they're going
to be doing well one year later.
So, for example, if a patientspends 90 days or longer in
(13:06):
treatment, which might start outin a detox and then go to a
residential treatment center fora while and then end up going
into what's called intensiveoutpatient and outpatient
therapy, if they're on acontinuum where they go from
very controlled to more and morereal-world therapy over the
(13:28):
course of 90 days, about 50% ofthose patients will be doing
well one year later.
If they only spend 20 days intreatment, only half of that
will be in treatment one yearlater.
So the difference between 20days and 90 days in some sort of
(13:50):
you know helpful therapy willdouble the likelihood that an
individual is doing well oneyear later.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is there an easy way for folks who are interested to
access this data, thisinformation about these centers?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yes, if they go to Conquer Addiction, which is
conquer-addictionorg, they cansearch for treatment centers in
the US that meet their criteria.
They can say you know, I wantedto be in California, I wanted
to serve women only, I wanted tobe this or that, and they can
pull up a list of treatmentcenters, with those with the
(14:26):
best independently verifiedoutcomes at the top of the list.
But here's the challenge it isstill well less than 1% of all
treatment centers who are doingany kind of accurate
post-treatment follow-up, and sothere aren't that many centers
yet that we can point to.
And so that's what we're tryingto do with Conquer Addiction as
(14:50):
our next step.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Well, you talked about aligning incentives.
I wonder if you've given anythought in your plan, down the
road, to maybe bringing thisinformation to some of the major
carriers, the major healthinsurance carriers or some of
the other folks who are buildinga la carte plans, which is more
and more the thing foremployers and saying, look, we
(15:12):
can drive more business to theappropriate centers and
therefore there's an incentive,there are more people on the
platform, there's an incentivefor the carriers or whoever it
is to start looking at.
Gee, maybe we need to betracking this stuff, we need to
watch more carefully and seewhat our outcomes are and do
follow up.
Or and to be crass about it,for a lot of these centers is it
(15:36):
just a money game.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
You know there's a few out there, of course, that
are bad actors.
There used to be more.
There's been a lot of cleanupin this industry since.
You know all the horriblethings you heard five or 10
years ago.
You know any business, anyindustry is going to attract
some people who are in it forthe money.
But most of the people that Italk to every day really care
(16:01):
very deeply about their clientsand helping them recover,
because most of the people whostart addiction treatment
centers are in recoverythemselves.
They know how difficult it is.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Back to the original question.
I kind of went a little bitlong there, sorry about that.
I do that sometimes like daysthat end.
And why?
How do you create an incentivefor more centers to do the kind
of work they need to do so thatthey can evidence what you need
to evidence to help sendpatients to them?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know, one of the challenges in the addiction
treatment space is that they'rereally stretched for cash.
The health insurance companieshave been continually squeezing
them, making them, you know,kick people out of treatment
earlier than is, you know, Ithink, appropriate, and so forth
(16:52):
, and it's a very hard businessto be in.
Money is very tight in this, inthis industry.
Our goal was if we could startdriving a lot more families or
employers to using accurate datato identify the most effective
treatment centers.
Our goal is that this willdrive a lot more business to the
more effective treatmentcenters.
(17:13):
Our goal is that this willdrive a lot more business to the
more effective treatmentcenters, and so that's what we
really want to do.
So an employer today that'sinterested in using one of the
centers on Conquer AddictionMarketplace they don't have to
contact us directly.
They can go directly to thetreatment center.
Say I want to take you up onyour market offer.
Tell their TPA to you know, setup the contract with the center
(17:34):
.
Say I want to take you up onyour market offer.
Tell their TPA to you know, setup the contract with the center
directly and they can knowinglyknow that they are sending
their employees and theemployee's dependents to one of
the best treatment centers outthere, and a treatment center
that's put their money wheretheir mouth is to commit to
confirm that they're reallyproviding effective treatment.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
I'm curious about something.
You know our folks, ouraudience, deals a lot with all
of the compliance issues thatthe government comes up with.
Has the Mental Health ParityAddiction Equity Act?
Has that done anything to helpease some of the pressures on
the centers that you're talkingabout in terms of length of stay
or compensation or whatever?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
It's a wonderful concept.
It has really not been enforced.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
You know, meanwhile the problem is growing and the
number of Apparently really goodtreatment centers is not
getting big anytime soon.
To be honest, I mean, what theheck do you do?
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Well, what we've realized is that if we rely on
treatment centers to cover thecost for outcomes research,
we're never going to get therewhere we need to be.
What we really need is to knownationally which rehabs are
providing truly effectivetreatment and which ones are not
, and so what we've decided todo as a nonprofit is to purchase
(19:00):
aggregated claims data on, youknow, a million or more patients
who go to treatment in anygiven year and use that to
calculate what is theeffectiveness of different
treatment centers across theboard.
So we're in the process ofraising we need to raise a
(19:22):
million seven five to producethat national claims registry.
The first time, we're usingVISTA's data, my research data
that we know how 23,000 patientsdid one year post treatment,
and we're using that to create apredictive model that we can
use to identify what are thefactors and claims data that
(19:44):
tell us that somebody is likelyto be in recovery a year later
or not.
So, for example, if somebody'sback in the ER at 10 months with
an overdose, they're probablynot doing well at one year, but
maybe at six months and eightmonths.
If they're meeting with theirdoctor to deal with their
hypertension, maybe that's asign that they are doing really
well.
And so we're going to useVISTA's data on 23,000 patients
(20:09):
that we know how they were doingone year.
We're going to get the claimsdata for those same patients.
All of this de-identifiedthrough really cool technology
that exists today, and thenwe'll develop a predictive model
that we can roll out across themillion plus patients who were
in treatment during a given yearand that will allow us to
(20:32):
identify the effectiveness, toestimate the effectiveness of
treatment centers across theentire US.
Then what we're going to do iswe're going to share that
information with the rehabs andalso, by the way, with the
payers, because we see atremendous variation in
effectiveness by differenthealth insurance companies too,
(20:53):
and we're not into shaming.
We're not going to publishresults that show that treatment
center X or payer Y hashorrible outcomes.
We're going to say here's whatwe think your outcomes are,
based on our research.
If you would like to sharethose outcomes publicly, you can
do so for basically free onConquer Addiction's platform,
(21:17):
and that will allow more andmore people to get able to use
that information to help thempick the best treatment centers,
(21:46):
and as that becomes more of aresource for people, then I
think that will drive the entireindustry to more effective
treatment, and because we'vealso been able to identify what
type of treatment is most likelyto be effective for a
particular individual.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
And that's a great place.
Hopeful to end our conversationfor today, joanna Conte,
founder and chairman of theboard at Conquer Addiction and
we will put the link to yournonprofit in the show notes, so
anybody who wants to reach outor wants to learn more or maybe
make a capital investment can doso.
Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Thank you so much, David.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor
and our producer, hatcher Media.
Hey, if you need podcastproduction or professional
graphic design, josh Hatcher isthe expert to contact For more
information.
Visit him at HatcherMedianet.
That's H-A-T-C-H-E-R Media dotnet.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
This Shift Shapers podcast is copyrighted content
and may not be reproduced inwhole or in part without the
express written permission ofShipChaper Solutions LLC.
Copyright 2024.
It's been estimated that 8% of employees have a
moderate to severe addiction toalcohol and drugs, and that an
addicted employee can cost theiremployer $25,000.
What could make that problemeven worse and what can be done
to help resolve those issues?
We'll find out on this episodeof Shift Shapers.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Change either energizes or paralyzes.
The choice is yours.
This is the Shift Shaperspodcast, bringing the employee
benefits industry interviewswith individuals and companies
who are shaping the industryshifts.
And now here's your host, davidSaltzman.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And to help us answer that question, we've invited
Joanna Conte.
She is the founder and chairmanof the board at Conquer
Addiction.
Welcome, Joanna.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, thank you, david, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Pleasure is completely and totally all ours.
So let's start out with a greatstarting point.
Like a number of our guestsover the years, you ended up
doing what you're doing becauseof a personal story that
happened.
Would you be willing to sharethat with us?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yes, I would.
So I had a teenage daughter whodeveloped a really severe
alcoholism and she would drinknight after night to levels that
could potentially kill her.
She would just guzzle vodkauntil she would pass out or
(01:29):
whatever.
When we realized how severe itwas, it was after a couple of
car accidents and airlifts toshock trauma and so forth.
It started a six-year journeyfor us to try and find her
effective treatment and duringthose six years she was in and
(01:49):
out of different treatmentprograms.
I kept finding myself in acrisis situation where I would
have to make basically a lifeand death decision about where
to send Karina for treatment,and I wasn't able to make it on
the basis of hard data, sayingthis treatment center was
particularly effective and thisone wasn't.
Each time I was forced to makethis decision on the basis of
(02:16):
how nice somebody was on thephone.
We were incredibly lucky andafter six years we usually found
effective treatment and, as aresult, my daughter has now been
in recovery for 13 years andhas completely turned her life
around, is actually in the nextcouple of weeks expecting her
(02:37):
fourth little girl and has awonderful career traveling the
country and so forth.
So we've been incrediblyblessed, traveling the country
and so forth.
So we've been incrediblyblessed.
But when the worst was behindme, I said there's got to be a
way for the families comingbehind us to find effective
treatment.
The system is broken.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So let's forward that into the employer arena, which
is where most of our audiencelives.
They're mostly folks who areclient-facing and help employers
make decisions and deal withrisks just like this.
That $25,000 before an employeegoes to treatment is a stat
that you and I talked about inour pre-interview.
(03:18):
Where does that come from?
What drives those costs?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
that come from?
What drives those costs?
So, first of all, this is allof the research that my company
has created.
I've spent the last 10 yearsmonitoring over 100,000 patients
during addiction treatmentacross the US and also following
up post-treatment, through thepost-treatment year, with over
40,000 patients who were intreatment for addiction to see
(03:48):
how they're doing one, six and12 months later.
And what we found throughfollowing up with those patients
, monitoring them duringtreatment and following up with
them them afterwards, is that inthe year before they come to
treatment, the average patientwill have ER visits and
(04:11):
unplanned hospital stays anddetox treatments that will total
, on average, about $25,000 inthat pre-treatment year.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
That's before you factor in absenteeism, treatment
year.
That's before you factor inabsenteeism, presenteeism and
all the other isms that are kindof soft costs.
Let's call them right.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, and there's one other really large cost, and
that is that other research hasshown not ours, but other
research has shown that if youhave a patient that also has a
mental health disorder and anaddiction, it'll cost three to
four times as much to treat anyof their other physical
conditions.
So we already know diabetes isvery expensive for employers.
(04:54):
If you have an employee withdiabetes that also has a
substance use disorder, it'sgoing to cost you three to four
times more on average to treatthem than if they didn't have
either.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So, going back to something that you said, and we
kind of trace your journey alittle bit, choosing a provider
based on how nice the person whoanswered the phone happened to
be on that given day, on thatgiven moment, on that given
phone call, is probably not thebest way.
Were there no other assetsavailable to you, and what have
(05:29):
you been working on since?
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Well, what was so frustrating was I would ask the
salespeople.
I'd say well, what is yoursuccess rate?
And I invariably got one of twoanswers Either they told me it
was simply impossible to measurehow effective treatment was, or
they made up some number.
They would say oh, 80%, 85% ofour patients are in recovery one
(05:51):
year later, which, as much aswe would all like to believe
that it's absolute nonsense,addiction is a chronic disease.
Our research shows that onlyabout 36% of patients will be
not using drugs or alcohol oneyear later.
It's very difficult to recoverfrom addiction, and so you know,
(06:13):
there was no real informationout there that I could use to
make a decision andunfortunately, 20 years later,
not much has changed.
I guess it has been quite.
It's been about 17 years andthe situation is the same.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So what are you to do , whether you're a parent or a
caregiver or a paternalisticemployer or just somebody who is
a friend and wants to help?
What options are out there?
Has anything gotten better?
Is there any more informationabout quality and outcomes and
all of that stuff available?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
There is some.
That's what I've spent the last10 years focusing on.
My research company, as I said,has monitored over 100,000
patients during treatment andfollowed up with over 40,000 of
them afterwards, and what wehave found is that there's a
tremendous variation in theeffectiveness of different
rehabs.
While the average is that 36%of patients will be doing well
(07:16):
one year later, it goes all theway from over 50% at some rehabs
of their patients are doingwell a year later to less than
15% at other rehabs, and theproblem is you can't tell which
is which by looking at thepretty pictures on the website.
And so what my daughter and Ihave done is create a nonprofit
(07:37):
called Conquer Addiction, whereour goal is to help the families
and employers to find moreeffective treatment, and so what
we've done is treatment centerswho have proven that at least
40% or more of their patientsare in recovery one year after
treatment.
They are on the ConquerAddiction website with a
(08:01):
five-star rating.
Their actual research resultsare there so that people can see
for themselves the impact thatattending that treatment center
has had on patients through athird-party independent research
company, and they can contactthat treatment center if they're
interested in considering goingthere and then that's been
(08:25):
there for about five years.
Most recently, we took it to thenext level and created a market
of truly effective treatmentcenters where we asked treatment
centers that could prove that ahigh percentage of their
patients were in recovery oneyear later.
We asked them to create anall-inclusive bundled rate
(08:46):
payment bundled rate payment foran episode of care and you know
everything would be included.
There would be no surprises.
But what is so cool about whatwe've done with this market is
we've also required to be partof the market that if a patient
(09:07):
completes treatment at one ofthese treatment centers and they
relapse within the 90 daysafter they complete treatment,
that the center agrees to takethem back into treatment for at
least 20, 21 days on their owndime.
So we've aligned the incentives.
Everyone the patient, the payer, the rehab are all aligned
(09:34):
identically, with the focusbeing on how do we help this
patient recover.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
And now a word from our sponsor.
You're not just an advisor,you're a game changer.
Forget cookie-cutteroff-the-shelf solutions.
That's yesterday's news, it's2025, and it's all about
delivering bold, custom-craftedplans that truly make a
difference.
At the core is a razor-sharpself-insured framework, but the
(10:03):
real magic that's in thehigh-impact point solutions.
You strategically layer in toslash costs and supercharge
member outcomes.
But let's be real, that's wherethe headaches start Hours
wasted sifting through endlessoptions, wrestling with
integration issues and fightingdata-sharing roadblocks.
(10:24):
It's a time suck and it'sholding you back Not anymore.
Meet Benapower, the AI-poweredgame changer that builds killer
plans in minutes, not hours.
Benapower doesn't just curatethe best point solutions.
It makes them work togetherseamlessly, streamlining
communication and drivingcollaboration like never before.
(10:45):
With Benapower, you're armedwith an end-to-end AI-enabled
solution that makes youunstoppable.
Spend less time piecingtogether a patchwork plan and
more time selling your clients.
Get unmatched ROI and youbecome the go-to advisor that
everyone's talking about.
Want to take your game to thenext level?
(11:06):
Visit benapowerai or schedule ademo at info at benapowercom.
Find your power with Benapower.
And now back to ourconversation.
How frequent are relapses inthe first 90 days?
Is that something that happensall the time, or do you have any
(11:28):
statistics around that?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yes, well, as I said, only 36% of patients are in
recovery one year later, asdefined as meeting their drug
and alcohol treatment goals, andof the patients that are not in
recovery, the majority of themwill probably relapse in the
first 30 days.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yeah, it's scary.
This is a terrible disease.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Well, and it's multivariate.
So I was going to go back towhen you started looking into
the problem and you startedtrying to quantify these results
.
There's so many variables.
Are you at the point, even with100,000 cases that you've
looked at, are you at the pointwhere you can make any kind of
(12:16):
conclusions about what makes oneprogram successful and another
program maybe less so?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
We can definitely say a number of things in very
general terms.
I mean, there is some truth thataddiction is an art.
It is partly science, I'm sure,but it is also an art.
How well does the therapistconnect with the patient, help
them resolve whatever the issuesthat are making them drink or
(12:44):
drug to oblivion?
You know that takes a veryspecial person to be able to do
that, but in general what we cansay is the longer a patient is
in treatment, the higher thelikelihood is that they're going
to be doing well one year later.
So, for example, if a patientspends 90 days or longer in
(13:06):
treatment, which might start outin a detox and then go to a
residential treatment center fora while and then end up going
into what's called intensiveoutpatient and outpatient
therapy, if they're on acontinuum where they go from
very controlled to more and morereal-world therapy over the
(13:28):
course of 90 days, about 50% ofthose patients will be doing
well one year later.
If they only spend 20 days intreatment, only half of that
will be in treatment one yearlater.
So the difference between 20days and 90 days in some sort of
(13:50):
you know helpful therapy willdouble the likelihood that an
individual is doing well oneyear later.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is there an easy way for folks who are interested to
access this data, thisinformation about these centers?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yes, if they go to Conquer Addiction, which is
conquer-addictionorg, they cansearch for treatment centers in
the US that meet their criteria.
They can say you know, I wantedto be in California, I wanted
to serve women only, I wanted tobe this or that, and they can
pull up a list of treatmentcenters, with those with the
(14:26):
best independently verifiedoutcomes at the top of the list.
But here's the challenge it isstill well less than 1% of all
treatment centers who are doingany kind of accurate
post-treatment follow-up, and sothere aren't that many centers
yet that we can point to.
And so that's what we're tryingto do with Conquer Addiction as
(14:50):
our next step.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Well, you talked about aligning incentives.
I wonder if you've given anythought in your plan, down the
road, to maybe bringing thisinformation to some of the major
carriers, the major healthinsurance carriers or some of
the other folks who are buildinga la carte plans, which is more
and more the thing foremployers and saying, look, we
(15:12):
can drive more business to theappropriate centers and
therefore there's an incentive,there are more people on the
platform, there's an incentivefor the carriers or whoever it
is to start looking at.
Gee, maybe we need to betracking this stuff, we need to
watch more carefully and seewhat our outcomes are and do
follow up.
Or and to be crass about it,for a lot of these centers is it
(15:36):
just a money game.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
You know there's a few out there, of course, that
are bad actors.
There used to be more.
There's been a lot of cleanupin this industry since.
You know all the horriblethings you heard five or 10
years ago.
You know any business, anyindustry is going to attract
some people who are in it forthe money.
But most of the people that Italk to every day really care
(16:01):
very deeply about their clientsand helping them recover,
because most of the people whostart addiction treatment
centers are in recoverythemselves.
They know how difficult it is.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Back to the original question.
I kind of went a little bitlong there, sorry about that.
I do that sometimes like daysthat end.
And why?
How do you create an incentivefor more centers to do the kind
of work they need to do so thatthey can evidence what you need
to evidence to help sendpatients to them?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know, one of the challenges in the addiction
treatment space is that they'rereally stretched for cash.
The health insurance companieshave been continually squeezing
them, making them, you know,kick people out of treatment
earlier than is, you know, Ithink, appropriate, and so forth
(16:52):
, and it's a very hard businessto be in.
Money is very tight in this, inthis industry.
Our goal was if we could startdriving a lot more families or
employers to using accurate datato identify the most effective
treatment centers.
Our goal is that this willdrive a lot more business to the
more effective treatmentcenters.
(17:13):
Our goal is that this willdrive a lot more business to the
more effective treatmentcenters, and so that's what we
really want to do.
So an employer today that'sinterested in using one of the
centers on Conquer AddictionMarketplace they don't have to
contact us directly.
They can go directly to thetreatment center.
Say I want to take you up onyour market offer.
Tell their TPA to you know, setup the contract with the center
(17:34):
.
Say I want to take you up onyour market offer.
Tell their TPA to you know, setup the contract with the center
directly and they can knowinglyknow that they are sending
their employees and theemployee's dependents to one of
the best treatment centers outthere, and a treatment center
that's put their money wheretheir mouth is to commit to
confirm that they're reallyproviding effective treatment.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
I'm curious about something.
You know our folks, ouraudience, deals a lot with all
of the compliance issues thatthe government comes up with.
Has the Mental Health ParityAddiction Equity Act?
Has that done anything to helpease some of the pressures on
the centers that you're talkingabout in terms of length of stay
or compensation or whatever?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
It's a wonderful concept.
It has really not been enforced.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
You know, meanwhile the problem is growing and the
number of Apparently really goodtreatment centers is not
getting big anytime soon.
To be honest, I mean, what theheck do you do?
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Well, what we've realized is that if we rely on
treatment centers to cover thecost for outcomes research,
we're never going to get therewhere we need to be.
What we really need is to knownationally which rehabs are
providing truly effectivetreatment and which ones are not
, and so what we've decided todo as a nonprofit is to purchase
(19:00):
aggregated claims data on, youknow, a million or more patients
who go to treatment in anygiven year and use that to
calculate what is theeffectiveness of different
treatment centers across theboard.
So we're in the process ofraising we need to raise a
(19:22):
million seven five to producethat national claims registry.
The first time, we're usingVISTA's data, my research data
that we know how 23,000 patientsdid one year post treatment,
and we're using that to create apredictive model that we can
use to identify what are thefactors and claims data that
(19:44):
tell us that somebody is likelyto be in recovery a year later
or not.
So, for example, if somebody'sback in the ER at 10 months with
an overdose, they're probablynot doing well at one year, but
maybe at six months and eightmonths.
If they're meeting with theirdoctor to deal with their
hypertension, maybe that's asign that they are doing really
well.
And so we're going to useVISTA's data on 23,000 patients
(20:09):
that we know how they were doingone year.
We're going to get the claimsdata for those same patients.
All of this de-identifiedthrough really cool technology
that exists today, and thenwe'll develop a predictive model
that we can roll out across themillion plus patients who were
in treatment during a given yearand that will allow us to
(20:32):
identify the effectiveness, toestimate the effectiveness of
treatment centers across theentire US.
Then what we're going to do iswe're going to share that
information with the rehabs andalso, by the way, with the
payers, because we see atremendous variation in
effectiveness by differenthealth insurance companies too,
(20:53):
and we're not into shaming.
We're not going to publishresults that show that treatment
center X or payer Y hashorrible outcomes.
We're going to say here's whatwe think your outcomes are,
based on our research.
If you would like to sharethose outcomes publicly, you can
do so for basically free onConquer Addiction's platform,
(21:17):
and that will allow more andmore people to get able to use
that information to help thempick the best treatment centers,
(21:46):
and as that becomes more of aresource for people, then I
think that will drive the entireindustry to more effective
treatment, and because we'vealso been able to identify what
type of treatment is most likelyto be effective for a
particular individual.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
And that's a great place.
Hopeful to end our conversationfor today, joanna Conte,
founder and chairman of theboard at Conquer Addiction and
we will put the link to yournonprofit in the show notes, so
anybody who wants to reach outor wants to learn more or maybe
make a capital investment can doso.
Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Thank you so much, David.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor
and our producer, hatcher Media.
Hey, if you need podcastproduction or professional
graphic design, josh Hatcher isthe expert to contact For more
information.
Visit him at HatcherMedianet.
That's H-A-T-C-H-E-R Media dotnet.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
This Shift Shapers podcast is copyrighted content
and may not be reproduced inwhole or in part without the
express written permission ofShipChaper Solutions LLC.
Copyright 2024.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.