September is National Recovery Month, and we want to begin by applauding the behavioral health providers and care teams whose work is making a meaningful difference in the lives of individuals and families.

There is encouraging news to celebrate. This July, SAMHSA released the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. This provides five years of national trend data and reports continued downward or stable trends in most behavioral health indicators among adolescents and young adults. National overdose data also have been moving in the right direction.

National Recovery Month Is a Chance to Celebrate Progress and Ask Whether Your Data Proves It

Those trends represent real progress.

But Recovery Month is also a good time for behavioral health organizations to turn the question inward:

Can we demonstrate that the services we provide are producing meaningful recovery outcomes for the clients we serve?

For behavioral health leaders, this is more than a good-practice question. Measuring performance and using data to improve care are embedded in regulatory, accreditation, and quality-reporting expectations.

Are You Measuring Activity or Outcomes?

Behavioral health organizations have no shortage of data.

We know how many clients we serve. We track admissions, discharges, length of stay, treatment-plan completion, attendance, follow-up appointments, readmissions, restraints, medication measures, and numerous other indicators.

The challenge is determining whether the data tells us what we really want to know:

Are our clients getting better?

There is an important difference between measuring what an organization did and measuring what happened because of the care provided.

For example, an organization may measure whether a follow-up appointment was scheduled at discharge. That’s important.

But an outcome-focused organization goes further: Did the client actually connect with follow-up care? If not, why? Are there recurring barriers? Does the data show that certain populations are less likely to make that connection?

Similarly, a substance use treatment program can measure the number of clients completing treatment. But what does the organization know about continued engagement in treatment, recurrence of substance use, overdose, emergency department utilization, readmission, or other indicators following discharge?

The first set of measures tells us whether the process occurred.

The second helps tell us whether it worked.

CMS Is Already Looking at Outcomes

For psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units participating in Medicare’s Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Quality Reporting (IPFQR) Program, quality measurement isn’t optional. CMS requires eligible facilities to report specified quality data, and failure to meet program requirements can result in a reduction to the facility’s annual payment update. CMS publicly reports measures addressing areas such as follow-up after psychiatric hospitalization, medication continuation, readmissions, substance use treatment, and restraint and seclusion. (CMS — Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Quality Reporting Program)

The specific IPFQR measure set changes over time—which is another reason leaders should periodically review both CMS requirements and their own organizational dashboards. But the larger message remains the same: collecting and using meaningful quality data is both a regulatory expectation and an essential part of understanding whether care is producing the outcomes we intended.

The message for behavioral health leaders is important: Quality isn’t demonstrated simply by showing that care was provided. Increasingly, organizations need data that helps demonstrate what happened as a result of that care.

And that shouldn’t be viewed only as a reporting requirement.

These measures can provide a starting point for understanding where an organization’s care processes are working—and where they may be breaking down.

What Does Your Overdose Data Tell You?

Overdose provides a particularly important example.

The decline in national overdose deaths is encouraging. But national data doesn’t tell a behavioral health organization what is happening among its own clients.

Organizations providing substance use disorder services should understand their own overdose experience to the extent the information is available.

When an overdose involving a current or recently discharged client becomes known, consider whether the organization looks beyond the event itself.

Was the client transitioning between levels of care? Was there an interruption in treatment? Did the client receive or have access to medication for opioid use disorder when clinically appropriate? Was naloxone available? Was follow-up care successfully established? Were there barriers involving transportation, housing, insurance, medication access, or appointment availability?

One event may not reveal a pattern.

Multiple events associated with similar circumstances may.

That’s when outcome data becomes performance-improvement data.

The objective isn’t to assume that every adverse outcome could have been prevented by the provider. It is to determine whether the data identifies a weakness in a process that the organization has the ability to improve.

Go Beyond the Required Measures

Regulatory and accreditation requirements provide an important foundation, but high-performing behavioral health organizations should consider whether their outcome measures adequately reflect the services they provide and the populations they serve.

There isn’t one universal behavioral health outcome dashboard that is right for every organization.

A psychiatric hospital, residential treatment program, opioid treatment program, community mental health center, and substance use disorder treatment provider should not necessarily be measuring exactly the same things.

Best practice is to select a manageable group of meaningful measures tied to the organization’s services, risks, and goals—and then actually use the results.

Depending on the organization, useful measures might include successful connection to follow-up care, readmissions, emergency department utilization, recurrence of substance use, known overdose events, continued treatment engagement, changes in standardized symptom or functional assessments, medication continuation, housing stability, or achievement of individualized treatment goals.

Just as important, don’t look only at the organization-wide average.

Stratifying results by program, location, population, diagnosis, payer, or other meaningful variables can uncover differences that disappear when all the data is combined.

An overall follow-up rate may look acceptable while one program or population is performing significantly worse.

That’s the information leadership needs.

Don’t Just Collect the Data – Use It!

This is where we sometimes see organizations struggle.

A dashboard is presented at the quality meeting. The numbers are reviewed. Someone notes that a measure increased or decreased. The meeting moves on.

That is reporting data.

Performance improvement requires another step.

When a measure isn’t where leadership wants it to be, ask why. Drill down. Look for patterns. Talk with the staff closest to the process. Review a sample of clinical records. Talk with clients when appropriate. Determine whether the issue involves workflow, access, staffing, documentation, communication, transitions, or another barrier.

Then test an intervention and determine whether the outcome changes.

The same principle applies when the data is good.

If one program consistently achieves better follow-up rates or stronger client outcomes, find out what that team is doing differently. A successful practice in one part of the organization may be an opportunity for improvement elsewhere.

Data should lead to questions. Questions should lead to action. And action should lead back to the data.

What Should Leaders Ask During Recovery Month?

This September, consider putting your outcome dashboard on the leadership agenda and asking a few basic questions:

• Are we measuring outcomes that actually matter?
• Do we know whether clients successfully connect with care after they leave us?
• What do our readmissions, overdoses, emergency utilization, and other adverse outcomes tell us?
• Can we identify meaningful differences among programs or populations?
• When our data identifies a problem, can we demonstrate what we did about it—and whether the intervention worked?

And perhaps most importantly:

If someone asked us to demonstrate that our program helps clients achieve better outcomes, what data would we show them?

If that last question is difficult to answer, Recovery Month may be a good time to start the discussion.

The Barrins Perspective

Meaningful outcome measurement is more than a reporting requirement. The strongest organizations use their data to understand whether care is working, identify where clients may be falling through the gaps, and focus improvement efforts where they can make the greatest difference.

At Barrins, we recommend asking a simple question: Does your data help you improve care, or are you primarily collecting it to meet a requirement?

Take a fresh look at your outcome data this Recovery Month. Are you measuring what matters and using what you learn to improve care?

Barrins & Associates can help you evaluate your quality and performance improvement program, identify meaningful measures, and turn regulatory requirements into actionable improvement strategies. Contact us to learn more.