Questions for the Experts: What Makes an Addiction Rehab ‘The Best’?

ACEs Connection is a great resource for pooling knowledge – there are experts here across many fields including psychology, social work, and addiction.  

With so many experts on substance abuse and addiction, we want to know: what makes an addiction rehab ‘the best’? 

I work for The Hope House, a drug and alcohol recovery center recently named one of the best rehabs in Scottsdale, Arizona, according to Expertise. 

We are honored to be recognized for this and we firmly believe we are an elite treatment center! However, this spurred the question: what makes an addiction rehab ‘the best’? 

We, at The Hope House, consider ourselves to be the best rehab in the valley as we offer a variety of treatments -- treating everything from alcohol abuse to opioid addiction and the underlying causes of addiction. Our facilities are Joint Commission accredited and our masters-level clinicians are available 24/7 to ensure no patient is neglected.  

For this award, Expertise had local experts analyze 40 treatment centers in the area based on 25 distinct variables across 5 different categories.  

Here are the five categories and their respective descriptions given for this award: 

1. Reputation – A history of delighted customers and outstanding service 
2. Credibility – Building customer confidence with licensing, accreditations, and awards 
3. Experience – Masters of their craft, based on years of practical experience and education 
4. Availability – Consistently approachable and responsive, so customers never feel ignored 
5. Professionalism – Providing service with honesty, reliability, and respect 

While the organization did provide the selection criteria, they don’t show the scores given to each facility. Furthermore, the criteria they used to analyze rehabs addressed all levels of care. For example, The Hope House is a luxury, inpatient residential rehab, whereas others on the list offer only outpatient services or the full continuum of care. 

Again, we cannot express enough how honored we are to receive this award, but this led us to asking a few questions we were hoping the ACEs community would have an opinion on: 

1. Is it wise to include all levels of care into one category, or should they be separated? Why or why not? 
2. Furthermore, do patients and their familiesfully understand the varying levels of care, or is lumping them together like this how potential patientstruly analyze rehab? 
3. Do you think this list would have been more beneficial to future patients if treatment centers were ranked instead of alphabetically sorted? 
4. What is the single-most important trait that makes a great rehab?Does it differ by level of care? 
5. If you were determining this award wouldyou have used the same selection criteria? What else would you add to it? 

We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.  

Thank you for help as we aim to answer the proverbial question: What makes addiction rehabs ‘the best’ in their area?