This is an exclusive BHB+ story

Clinician retention challenges in addiction treatment arise when daily duties diverge from the essential mission of providing care.

The addiction treatment industry now has the opportunity to bring innovation to bear on perennial challenges in ways previously unimaginable. The advent and seemingly overnight proliferation of AI-backed software and the incursion of manufacturing-like technologies into addiction treatment, specifically the opioid treatment program (OTP) space, make the potential savings of time and capital by technology use a reality.

“Clinics are really struggling to keep the nurses in this role,” Sam Wilson, chief operating officer of Opio Connect Inc., told Behavioral Health Business, referring to the role that nurses play in administering methadone treatments within OTPs.

Whitefish, Montana-based Opio Connect offers OTPs software and robotics to dispense, track and administer methadone doses. It is also rolling out a suite of services that would allow other health care settings to establish satellite medication units.

Traditionally, patients are required to take methadone under the supervision of the clinician who dispenses the medication every day for the first few weeks of treatment. But through a series of policy changes in the post-COVID era, more patients are able to take home more individual doses of methadone from OTPs as they demonstrate stability in their recovery journey.

Ironically, this innovation in patient convenience and access places a considerable additional burden on clinicians who administer these medications. With more take-home doses, nurses are required to spend a lot more time measuring and packaging medication. Depending on the patient’s treatment regimen, this could include putting together 28 bottles of methadone — a Schedule II narcotic — for a month’s worth of medication.

“That’s not using them to their highest ability. Nurses didn’t go to nursing school to assemble medication bottles,” Wilson said. “It restores the nurse’s time to focus on the patient in front of them.”

It also frees the clinicians’ time for other activities. Alternatively, it may allow clinics to use fewer staff for dispensing methadone and allocate them to other services that could generate new revenue for the clinic, Wilson added.

The Opio Connect robotic dispensing system (called Zing) measures, bottles, heat-seals, labels and tracks take-home methadone doses four times faster than a nurse, Wilson said.

The company’s Zing Satellite service also pairs telehealth and remote technology with the robots’ methadone dose manufacturing unit to create virtually supported medication units. Wilson referred to these entities as “OTP lite.” The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) allows for OTPs to certify locations or mobile units as medication units to provide clinical care without the mandated wraparound services. They are effectively extensions of an OTP and fall under that licensure. They are meant to increase access to care services. However, staffing them is challenging.

Opio Connect

The Zing Satellite hardware and software are meant to bring these entities to life in other health care settings, beyond an OTP. This could include correctional facilities, Wilson said. This would be possible without adding additional staff to the location where the medication unit is to be established, assuming there is a provider who is cleared to handle methadone who would be able to load the medication into the machine.

In 2026, Opio Connect will roll out Zing Satellite locations. The service was developed with the support of a Small Business Innovation Research Grant, a part of the U.S. National Institute for Health’s HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative. The company will be studying the cost-effectiveness of these units.

These units will allow for a patient to see a member of the OTP staff via a telehealth visit. The software connected to the Zing robotics would further allow the clinician to authorize, dispense, and observe the in-person doses and verify receipt of the take-home doses.

“This is not like a vending machine; the nurse is interacting and has a great number of tools to check in on the patient, and everything is done in real time,” Opio Connect CEO and co-founder Amber Norbeck told BHB. “This is allowing the expert to reach large geographic locations without having to be there in person.”

Such expanded reach would be vital for increasing access to rural and other underserved communities. Norbeck, a clinical pharmacist, has experience working in and with rural hospitals. For about 18 years of her career, she lived and worked in Montana, one of the most rural states in the nation. Similar software already exists for hospital settings, she said.

“Why can’t we do this for OTPs?” she added.

The hope for better technology for admin functions

Operating since 1986, Maitland, Florida-based New Season won’t be using AI in clinical functions. Why? In short, the clinician’s ambient listening tool didn’t really take off, and there was no meaningful return on investment during the pilot phase.

CEO Jim Shaheen told BHB that the company has several AI initiatives in the works for businesses’ administrative functions, aimed at driving savings or uncovering missed revenue within the business. This is especially true when working with payers.

“With all the costs that I spend in fighting insurance companies for technical denials and all that — none of that is clinical,” Shaheen said. “It’s all back office and technical things that, if I can get better at, then those are real dollars that come back to us because, today, the insurance companies are denying claims for all these technical reasons, not clinical reasons.”

Early in 2026, New Season will roll out AI in its call center to handle non-clinic/intake calls, a chart-auditing tool to address health record and claims compliance at scale across the company’s care population and a patient eligibility and benefit check tool.

The company is already developing the AI chart-auditing tool. Ideally, the tool will be able to look at charts and find missing information, what existing information is incorrect or other documentation mistakes that require attention. It will take time to train the tool to do all of that, Shaheen said. At present, New Season has the tool ready to ensure that all major components of the record are represented.

“This will allow us to do a deep chart audit of 100% of our charts all the time,” Shaheen said. “That’s the real advantage of technology that’s coming up for us.

“What we expect for that to do is to help our counselors spend more time engaged with patients. At the end of the day, it’s about patient engagement. It’s about making sure we’re spending time with our patients. … The more time you spend with patients, guess what? The better they clinically do. It’s not rocket science.”

Auditing all patient records for New Season today would not be feasible. The company operates 92 OTPs and 55 intensive outpatient programs (IOPs) that are paired with those OTPs. Its footprint spans 20 states and encompasses about 33,500 daily patient interactions. The company’s revenue is “north of $240 million,” Shaheen said.

Shaheen hopes that improved collection or reductions in back-office and staff costs will offset increased technology spending in the short term. Because of the company’s “conscious decision” not to use AI in clinical settings and to not look for cost savings at that level as well.

To some degree, New Season can’t make cuts in its clinical department without violating appropriate clinical staffing ratios. 

“The misnomer sometimes in the public is that we’re cutting clinical services to save money. No, that is not what we are doing because, if our product is clinical services, why would we cut clinical services?” Shaheen said. “Our only other option is to cut costs in the back office.”

The increased back-office costs of many addiction treatment providers, especially OTPs, also have an ironic origin.

Until 2020, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) did not cover treatment through OTPs. The Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act of 2018 mandated that Medicare cover these services beginning in 2020.

This marked a sea change for the industry. While some payers — including grantmaking entities and state Medicaid programs — paid for these services. New Season’s revenue was previously mostly generated by patient self-pay. Services were typically $15 a day, unlike the luxury treatment centers where self-pay is the norm. Since then, the rate of in-network benefit utilization has inverted the makeup of New Season’s revenue. Today, 80% of the company’s revenue is from third-party payers.