Uncovering the Cost of Substance Abuse Treatment Centers

Substance abuse is a top concern for employers, both because of the cost of treatment and the disruption to members’ well-being. One Artemis customer wanted to see if their members were receiving affordable, high-quality assistance. Here’s how we helped them find out.

Find out how we helped one Artemis customer re-examine their substance abuse treatment network to find care that works for members and their bottom line.

The analysis.

The Artemis Platform is different from a traditional warehouse. The tool utilizes proprietary data models to help find hidden insights in benefits data. We made it easy for members to find trends, and with the help of skilled analysts, we can identify quick wins for our clients.

In the case for this customer, we used pre-loaded filters to build a cohort of members who were diagnosed with a substance abuse disorder from both medical and pharmacy claims.

Did you know that large employers spent $2.6 billion in 2016 to treat opioid addiction?

Within this cohort, we found 463 members with claims for substance abuse issues, and broke down how many of these members were subscribers, spouses and dependents.

The de-identified data we used in this analysis showed a few key findings:

01   The cost of substance abuse treatments for this client have gone up by 50.9% from the previous year.

02   Opioid abuse was the most common diagnosis in this cohort, followed by alcohol dependence.

03   While the majority of this population sought treatment at traditional rehabilitation facilities, seven employees were treated in luxury, ocean-front properties that totaled $144,867 in benefit spend.

Taking action.

This analysis highlighted trends, utilization, and engagement data the employer needed to take action. By identifying the substance abuse treatment providers that their members were using, this client is now reexamining their network and engaging members with education around high-quality providers.