Substance use disorder (SUD) providers are looking for new ways to expand their business offerings and partners to boost revenue. 

Diversifying offerings is one of the most popular ways to improve revenue generation. For many providers, this means increasing their continuum of care to include acute residential services through intensive outpatient programs [IOPs] and outpatient coaching services.

For others, increasing revenue generation really comes down to finding the right payer, employer, and community partners to team up with to bring in new patients. Some providers’ strategies combine the two approaches.

“We started out for many years just doing residential care. And as we move more [to working with] payers, we saw an opportunity to expand into partial [hospitalization], which led to an opportunity to grow into IOP,” Robert Poznanovich, chief business growth officer at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, said at Behavioral Health Business’ Autism & Addiction Treatment Forum. “Then we look at the gaps in the continuum; we can add recovery management, services, coaching, peer and other forms of the continuum of care, which is really driving a lot of revenue. So now 20 to 30% of our revenue comes from non-traditional services.”

Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation was founded in 2014 by merging the Hazelden Foundation and the Betty Ford Center. Headquartered in Center City, Minnesota, the addiction and mental health provider has 17 treatment centers.

One of the other non-traditional lines of SUD services that providers are beginning to explore to diversify their revenue streams is at-home services.

“The next big thing is lengthening with more home-based service lines for both adolescents and adults,” Maks Danilin, chief revenue officer at Guardian Recovery, said at the event. “So when an individual is completing their traditional 30-day residential stay, and they are a parent of two children, have a mortgage, a career and are about to go home, virtual is an option, but expanding it to offer home-based service lines where they can go back to work, they can go back to their families, … and have care fit around their personal, professional schedules is [key].” 

Delray Beach, Florida-based Guardian Recovery has over a dozen residential centers dedicated to treating SUD. Its SUD care includes medical detox, residential inpatient, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient services. It also provides mental health services, including psychiatry, therapy, TMS, ketamine, and a mental health IOP.

Still, other providers continue to zero in on their level of care and instead find community partners.

For example, Groups Recover Together provides lower acuity care for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). Instead of expanding its reach to cover more services, Groups Recover Together has tapped into community partners with inpatient, IOP, and PHP capabilities to help service their patients.

Instead, when looking at diversifying revenue, Groups Recover Together has prioritized its partnership initiatives.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time with departments of corrections, and a lot of time with states, seeking to serve uninsured folks, folks transitioning out of incarceration, and back into the community,” Cooper Zelnick, chief revenue officer at Groups Recover Together, said at the BHB conference. “And we’ve been more deeply partnering with our state partners.”

Woburn, Massachusetts-based OUD treatment provider Groups Recover Together offers its patients medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and virtual or in-person group therapy through “technology-assisted treatment.”

Meanwhile, some providers are growing through partnerships with employers.

“We put a lot of effort over the last couple of years into employer relationships. We’re working with brokers and HR consulting companies in ways we haven’t done before to try to make sure that we carve out a space for us that we’re not forgotten as they’ve launched mental health strategies that don’t include substance use and then also when they have to try to look at steerage,” Poznanovich said. “We’ve created … a center of excellence package, for example, that bundles care in new ways, which is how we’re getting more money. That gives employers a chance to sponsor recovery and treatment in new ways that steer patients to us.”

One of the main issues when working with employers is stigma. Many people with SUD are reluctant to go through their employer to get care.

Yet that is changing, which could open the door for more of these types of partnerships going forward.