Going For Broke? –
March 13, 2019 – New admissions — excluding several new facilities the company purchased in 2018 — fell by almost 20 percent in the last few months of 2018, compared to the same period last year. Outpatient visits fell by about the same amount during that period and the average number of patients on a given day fell by about 14 percent. The struggle to find new patients started last summer when Google made a change to its search algorithm that the company says caused a 30 percent drop in calls to the company’s call centers. In November, the company reported the decrease in call volume led to a nearly 10 percent decrease in its patient census. American Addiction Centers reported a net loss of about $11.5 million for the third quarter of 2018. The company hired a new executive to direct digital marketing and made changes to training for call center employees to address the problem. According to a statement from CEO Michael Cartwright, admission numbers have only recently started to improve.
