The Council for Alcohol & Drug Abuse Services is a non-profit, private substance use and co-occurring disorder treatment facility in Chattanooga offering long-term support for recovery. CADAS’s treatment, prevention, and educational services include care ranging from medically managed withdrawal and residential rehabilitation to adolescent services and family therapy. CADAS is accredited by The Joint Commission and funded by a grant from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and other sources.
Challenges: Convoluted, time-consuming processes from start to finish
When it came to caring for clients and running a non-profit, CADAS’s prior electronic health record (EHR) software not only made staff work harder and longer but also created stress for people seeking help.
According to Wendy Brewton, director of IT for CADAS, the intake process for a client required admissions counselors to fill in forms by hand and then scan them into the EHR. Once in the EHR, clinicians would have to move between multiple screens to input data, making the process very convoluted. Often taking over 2.5 hours, this caused frustration for clients and sometimes led them to walk away before they could even begin treatment.
To initiate drug-screening, admissions counselors filled out paperwork on a clipboard for a client to sign by hand. Counselors or technicians would then scan the form into the EHR with the client’s signature.
As for reporting, CADAS says its old EHR could not pull the data needed by the executive director for briefing Tennessee legislators, so staff would spend up to two days extracting information reporting on the facility’s progress.
On top of everything else, the product was running on outdated technology, which made it nearly impossible to update. Brewton says CADAS essentially had to re-implement the whole system any time they wanted to update the software.
Solution: Arize saves time, empowers CADAS to quickly start treatment
After an extensive, year-long search for a new EHR to replace its legacy system, CADAS implemented Arize—Cantata’s modern behavioral health EHR platform designed to eliminate the frustration of outdated systems—in October 2024. Arize empowers CADAS to:
- Rapidly complete thousands of drug-screenings
- Expedite intake and quickly put clients into recovery
- Measure the success of its substance abuse treatment programs
- Easily justify clients’ treatment for insurance companies
- Boost the accuracy of clinicians’ records for auditing
- Pinpoint referral sources for new clients
We can’t help clients if our clinicians are stuck doing 4+ hours of paperwork every day. Now, with Arize simplifying documentation, they can finish notes quickly and get back to focusing on the people who need them most.
The facility’s staff now complete drug screenings electronically in three or four minutes compared to the nearly 10 minutes it took per screening with pen and paper. Since putting Arize in place, CADAS has completed 8,357 drug screenings. Saving approximately six minutes per screening means CADAS has saved a total of 835 hours over the last year.
With Arize, admissions counselors complete the intake process in under an hour, allowing clients to quickly start their path to recovery. CADAS says expediting intake for someone who may be “having one of the worst days of their life” eliminates stress and anxiety for both clients and staff.
Measuring Progress
When staff call discharged clients, they can check on their recovery and input the responses into Arize. A report collects how many people staff contacted and how each client’s recovery is progressing, which provides a barometer on the success of CADAS’s programs. Within minutes, Brewton said, CADAS’s executive director has access to the data needed to communicate with state legislators about the facility’s programs and success.
Enhancing Care
Because Arize enables mobile access, CADAS’s navigators, who serve as liaisons for the facility with hospitals and courts, can immediately access the EHR via their tablets or mobile devices to refer a client. Because the older EHR had no mobile functionality, navigators would use a VPN (i.e., a service creating a secure connection between a device and the internet) to access the system, which could take several minutes to connect. The time lag would frustrate liaisons, and in some cases, cause potential referrals to walk away.
Streamlining Audits
Arize also gives clinicians a way to keep their notes and plans in a central location. This enables managers to audit charts each month and look for whether clinicians file in a timely manner and input all required data. Accuracy has climbed from 90 to 96 percent, and it is trending higher. Ease of auditing also facilitates CADAS’s interactions with The Joint Commission as well as the State of Tennessee, leading to fewer findings.
Tracking Referrals
CADAS’s marketing director uses Arize to track referrals and measure outcomes, something he previously hasn’t had the right tools to do. “We can create dashboards and reports with data from Arize for our marketing director, so he can see the impact of his work promoting CADAS,” adds Brewton. “If we get a lot of clients coming to us from an EAP or the court system, he’ll see those referral sources and can spend more time working there, which will be a huge benefit for all of us.”
Meaningful Partnership
During CADAS’s search for a new partner and EHR platform, Brewton says customer service and communication ultimately pushed Cantata ahead of other potential vendors.
“With previous vendors, the customer service is gone as soon as you sign the contract,” she says. “In the long run, we need a partner. Cantata always stands by what they say and that means a lot to us. Anything that has been promised to us has been upheld.”
With previous vendors, the customer service is gone as soon as you sign the contract. In the long run, we need a partner. Cantata always stands by what they say and that means a lot to us. Anything that has been promised to us has been upheld.
Conclusion
By streamlining intake, drug screenings, and documentation, Arize has changed how CADAS supports both clients and staff. What once felt like an endless cycle of forms and frustration is now a smoother, faster process that removes barriers to treatment. Clients begin recovery sooner, counselors and clinicians feel less overwhelmed, and the entire team is more present for the people who need them most.