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Transparency Report
Choosing to enter treatment is the most important decision a person experiencing addiction will ever make. Selecting a treatment center is the second most important. As one of the nation’s preeminent informational resources and web directories in the mental health and addiction recovery space, Rehab.com is committed to empowering readers to make informed treatment choices for themselves or someone they love.
Rehab.com’s treatment facility rankings are an aggregation of the most comprehensive, reliable, and up-to-date data available to the public. This publicly available data used to create an overall quality score for each of our more than 25,000 addiction treatment facility listings. Rehab centers are sorted and ranked on Rehab.com city + state pages using these overall quality scores.
In keeping with our commitment to transparency and trustworthiness, we offer a detailed description of our rankings system and the methodologies used to collect, evaluate, and translate our data into our overall rehab scores. In this process, we strive for the highest possible degree of completeness and accuracy.
We invite facility owners and operators to claim their listings and provide data updates as needed. All Rehab.com content is regularly audited and updated by our expert team of medical professionals, addiction recovery specialists, and award-winning authors.
Key Transparency Metrics
Rehab.com’s rankings system uses several key metrics to assess overall client experience, operational/clinical performance, and public presence for each treatment center. Rankings are based on the following data categories:
| Category | Metric | Description | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reputation | |||
| Market presence | How well known and reputable the brand is. Aggregated score from metrics on 3rd party sources like Crunchbase, Glassdoor, SEMrush, Moz, Majestic, and others. | High | |
| Social presence | Size of social media audience including number of platforms, total follower count, and monthly reach. | Medium | |
| Staff & employees | Influenced by the total number of employees in the organization, credentialed clinicians, and staff to patient ratio. | Medium | |
| Business history | How long the brand has been in business, the number of locations, and brand reputation. | Low | |
| Satisfaction | |||
| Review recency | Number of reviews in the past 36 months. More recent reviews have greater weight. | High | |
| Review quality | Aggregate review rating, with additional emphasis on quantity of highly positive reviews. | High | |
| Review volume | Total number of reviews on rehab.com Google & Facebook. | Medium | |
| Trust | |||
| Contact info | Name, address, phone, & website. Verified against local data. | High | |
| Accreditations | Whether the facility has been accredited by one or more national or state licensing bodies. | High | |
| Images & video | Images, video, and virtual tours help patients understand what to expect from treatment. | High | |
| Service descriptions | Unique descriptions for addiction treatment services, available programs, and therapies used. | Medium | |
| Facility overview | A longer description of the facility and amenities offered, to give patients more detailed info about the center. | Medium | |
| Facility details | Additional details that help prospective patients find the right fit. Includes cost of treatment, payment options, number of beds, and insurance accepted. | Low | |
In the sections below, we discuss in detail the key metrics used to develop Rehab.com’s overall rehab quality score. We also describe how each is used to develop the overall rehab score.
Brand Reputation and Operations
In recovery, as in life, reputation matters. We strive to recommend rehab centers with a known reputation for quality care. Our brand reputation metric is a subcategory of the market presence score .
We base these scores on a range of data points that encompass review volume, the number of employees and locations, and the age of the facility. This ensures that our highest-rated facilities are those with an established and enduring record of excellence in patient care and recovery.
Market Presence
Another measure of the strength of a treatment center’s brand reputation is the number and quality of the 3rd party references, links, and appearances it generates. When recognized authorities are talking about a treatment center or linking to its content, that’s a positive sign that the facility is well-received and highly valued within the industry.
This also suggests that the quality of care offered by a facility is high, their programs and services generating interest among healthcare consumers and industry professionals alike.
Likewise, a treatment center that actively engages in the industry, including effectively using 3rd party references and effective backlinks in its online content suggests a vibrant and evolving organizational culture.
From our readers’ perspective, this is a valuable attribute because it reflects the facility’s engagement with recognized authorities inside and outside of the industry. This has implications for processes related to research, treatment protocols, and service innovations.
These innovations, ultimately, are what help drive a center’s position in its market, distinguishing it from its nearest competitors. We draw these data from tools like SEMRush, Majestic, Spyfu, Moz, and other related 3rd party sources.
Social Presence
Social media is an increasingly powerful tool not only for entertainment but also for information-seeking.
This includes turning to sources such as X, Instagram, and LinkedIn to find medical information, research clinicians and treatment facilities, and connect with past and current clients and stakeholders. Now more than ever, healthcare consumers prioritize a vibrant healthcare community when making treatment decisions.
Because of this, we include a facility’s social presence in our rankings system. Social presence provides value for our consumers by demonstrating a facility’s growth, influence, and engagement in the online community.
Staff and Employees
Our operational metrics scores reward facilities that demonstrate productivity, longevity, growth, and performance quality system-wide. We base our operational metrics scores on publicly available data.
One of the most significant data points in this metric is the employee count. Facilities that employ a larger staff receive additional points, up to 100 total staff. We believe that this range represents an optimal balance for operational productivity and output, to include consistent standards of quality care and positive client outcomes.
By capping the score available based on employee counts, we avoid unduly crediting larger hospital systems with potentially hundreds or thousands of employees, to the detriment of smaller facilities.
Revenues are another important data point that we take as an indicator of productivity, growth, and performance. Facilities that report higher revenues will earn a higher score, with diminishing returns as revenue climbs. Again, this minimum and maximum range is used to guard against the effects of variations in facility size.
The longevity of a healthcare facility often reflects its performance. Older, more established facilities have had time to develop their record and reputation. Prospective clients and families often place more trust in established treatment centers that have a proven record of success. For this reason, we award additional market presence score for every year the facility has been in operation.
Brand History and Reviews
Although our ratings system applies only to individual treatment centers, we recognize that brands matter. The tenor of a business is set at the top.
This is why we factor brand reviews into our facility ratings. Drawing on publicly available data from Glassdoor, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn, we gather reviews of the company from employees, clients, and stakeholders.
Ratings from the various review channels contribute to the overall market presence score.
Reviews and Consumer Satisfaction
Of the six data categories used to determine a treatment center’s overall score, facility reviews are the most significant, comprising approximately half of the total rehab score.
The importance we ascribe to the reviews of clients, former clients, and friends and family members is two-fold. First and foremost, Rehab.com is dedicated to earning and maintaining the trust of our readers.
Our goal is to serve those impacted by mental health and addiction challenges by offering reliable, unbiased, and reader-focused content. And we believe that far and away the best source of relevant and actionable information comes from those who have first-hand experience with the facilities described in our directory.
Our rankings system prioritizes facility reviews because we believe clients and family members are best served not by outside assessors but by the perspectives of those who have walked the recovery journey themselves.
Facility reviews are evaluated according to three principal criteria in order to arrive at an overall “Satisfaction” rating. These criteria are quality, quantity, and recency.
Review Recency
The recency metric places a higher ranking relevance on more current consumer reviews. We use a systematized decay model to decrease the significance of reviews as they age.
More specifically, consumer reviews that are more than 18 months old have a significantly lower impact on rankings than more recent reviews. After 3 years, the impact of a review on facility ratings drops significantly again and plateaus.
This ensures that reviews based on the most up-to-date information relating to a facility’s services, quality of care, and amenities have a greater impact on Consumer Satisfaction ratings. Ultimately, recency assessments enable us to ensure our assessments are based on accurate and updated data, enhancing their usefulness for our readers.
Review Quality
The quality criterion is determined by a facility’s average consumer rating. This metric combines both internal reviews on rehab.com as well as 3rd party reviews from sources like Google and Facebook.
We evaluate a combination of all-time aggregate review ratings, as well as recent positive reviews to determine an overall score. We define “positive reviews” as those with ratings of 4 stars and above on a 5 point scale (i.e. the top 20% percentile on the channel’s rating scale).
Review Quantity
In order to develop an overall Consumer Satisfaction rating, the quantity of facility reviews is also essential. Quantity scores are weighted to ensure that discrepancies in review volume do not unfairly disadvantage smaller facilities or advantage larger ones serving a higher client population and therefore generating more consumer reviews.
Trust Score and Data
Though consumer satisfaction ratings contribute significantly to our treatment centers ranking system, they are not the only criterion used to evaluate each facility.
Our ratings reward facilities that provide comprehensive and easily accessible information about their programs, services, amenities, accreditations, and financials. Because relevant and reliable information is critical to treatment decision-making, profile completeness is our second most important rating metric.
Facilities may earn a higher or lower completeness score depending on the accessibility, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of their public data.
Contact Information and Location Details
Facilities are expected to make the following information publicly available at all times:
- Physical and mailing address
- Telephone number
- Website address
Treatment centers are also expected to maintain a dedicated facility website.
It is important that contact info be accurate and up-to-date so patients can be confident when researching rehab centers.
Accreditations and Licensing
The quality of care a rehab provides is only as strong as the caregivers providing it. This is why we rank highly facilities that offer detailed information about their staff and clinicians.
We award treatment centers that enable consumers to view their clinicians’ credentials and educational and professional background. We prioritize this element because access to clinicians’ credentials is an important benefit for prospective clients and their families, enabling them to find the highest quality care from the best trained and most experienced care providers.
In addition to the value we place on consumers’ ability to assess a facility’s clinical team, we also recognize the vital importance of vetting the facility. Accreditations are a key component of quality assurance in healthcare.
Accreditations enable clients and families to ensure a treatment center is following best practices and optimal standards for addiction treatment and patient care. This supports our readers efforts to find treatment centers that are safe, effective, and well-aligned with clients’ unique needs and goals.
We award a large bonus to profile completion score for the first accreditation a treatment center earns, with incremental increases for every additional accreditation.
Because not all accrediting bodies are created equal, though, points are awarded only for those accreditations recognized to set the standard for excellence in the field. The accrediting bodies that contribute to our profile completeness score are
- Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
- The Joint Commission
- Commission on Accreditation of Rehab Facilities (CARF)
- Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP)
- National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)
Images, Video, and Digital Tours
In our modern media age, a picture can be worth far more than a thousand words. Descriptions are beneficial, but when a treatment facility also offers photos, videos, and virtual tours of their center, they’re providing an important service for healthcare consumers.
These multimedia resources help clients and family get a strong sense of what a facility is like and what prospective clients can expect once they get there. This is tremendously valuable in families’ decision-making and this is why we award facilities that provide such resources.
Addiction Treatments and Services Offered
We prioritize rehab centers that clearly state what services, programs, and levels of care are offered, and provide specific details about what patients can expect from these services.
These descriptions aid prospective clients in making informed decisions about their own care or that of their loved one. Unique, customized, and specific details about service offerings equip consumers with the information needed to align their care plan with their individual recovery needs and goals.
Facilities that provide a unique, customized description of their clinical services are awarded a higher score. When a treatment center provides particularly substantive information regarding its therapeutic services, the profile completeness score increases significantly.
A unique description of facility levels of care also contributes to profile completion. These descriptions are valuable to patients and families seeking to understand how the particular clinic will support them at each stage of the recovery journey, including inpatient, outpatient, and aftercare services across a wide continuum of care.
Facilities that also provide unique descriptions of their various therapeutic programs and treatment models may earn a higher profile completeness score. Customized descriptions of service offerings, such as holistic therapies, 12-step programming, and MAT services help consumers select the treatment center that best suits their needs and priorities.
About the Facility
A significant part of the completeness score is awarded if centers provide a unique description of their facility and programs. These unique descriptions provide significantly more value to consumers than generic templated text.
Highly rated clinic descriptions may offer information on the center’s history, core mission and values, prevailing treatment models, etc. This information helps our users make a more informed choice about whether a treatment center will be right for their needs.
Payment Options and Insurance Accepted
Financial considerations are often top-of-mind for those preparing to enter recovery. But cost should never be a barrier to treatment.
We are committed to the idea that rehab treatment should be both financially transparent and financially accessible.
Because of this, our profile completeness ranking awards centers that clearly describe the costs of treatment at the facility and explain how clients can pay for treatment, including any programs or services relating to grants, financial assistance, or low or no-cost treatment options.