DDx — BEHAVIORAL HEALTH
Behavioral Health: the five ways this presents
Each presentation below lists what could be causing it, ranked, with the finding that tells the causes apart and what resolution actually looks like. 24 causes, 24 tests, each cited to a primary source for this specialty rather than borrowed from another one.
Nothing on these pages describes a client or an engagement.
PRESENTATIONS
-
Patient acquisition cost is climbing
Inquiry volume is holding or up, VOBs are getting run, and cost per admission has climbed for three quarters straight. The admissions team says the calls are worse. Marketing says the calls are the same. Nobody has the funnel from inquiry to VOB to authorizati…
4 CAUSES · 4 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
New patient volume is short of plan
The phone rings, the forms come in, the referral relationships look intact — and admissions are short of what the inquiry volume should produce. Admissions staff are working full days and cannot say where the drop happens, because the funnel from first contact…
5 CAUSES · 5 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
Growth has plateaued
Admissions are steady, marketing spend is up, and average daily census has not moved in three quarters. The bed board looks full most weeks, the waitlist is real, and nobody can say whether the constraint is demand, length of stay, or the building itself. Befo…
5 CAUSES · 5 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
Performance varies by location
Same name over the door, same playbook, same spend per site — and the sites do not behave alike. One is full with a waitlist, one is half empty, one posts admissions that look excellent until you notice its average length of stay is four days. The group meetin…
5 CAUSES · 5 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
Preparing for sale
Census is up, the last two years look strong, and a banker has been in the building. The question on the table is whether a buyer will read the growth as repeatable or as a good run — and right now the answer lives in the founder's head, the referral relations…
5 CAUSES · 5 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH →
WHICH ONE
How to tell which one you have
These five overlap, and two or three usually apply at once. The order to read them in is set by which number actually moved. If cost per new patient moved, start there. If demand held and bookings did not, start with the volume page. If nothing moved at all, start with the plateau page — and if the group total looks acceptable while one site keeps coming up in conversation, read the variance page first, because a pooled number is structurally incapable of showing you what you are looking for.
Every cause on every page above carries a measurement you can run in your own systems, with the finding that confirms it and the finding that rules it out. Run two or three before you brief anybody. If the tests tell you this is not a marketing problem, that is the correct answer and it cost you nothing.
RESOLUTION
What resolves each, and what resolved looks like
Each presentation resolves to a different part of the work, and the pages say which: reporting and attribution where the finding is a measurement error, conversion and desk work where the loss is between the inquiry and the admission, acquisition where the demand genuinely is not there, and pre-sale work where the question is whether growth can be re-run by somebody else.
Each also carries what resolved looks like as a number — the measure, the published median, the top decile where an honest one exists, and a target range — with the source in the row. Where no credible distribution is published, the page says so instead of borrowing one from an adjacent specialty. That absence is itself a finding: it means your own trailing history is the only benchmark worth measuring against.
WHERE YOU STAND
Reference ranges for behavioral health operators
See also where you stand and what decides the outcome before any of this is treated.
A differential narrows the list. It does not close it — that is what the examination is for.
APPLY — 6 / QUARTER →