Increasing Patient Volume Without Increasing Headcount

Treatment Trends is a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit providing substance use treatment and recovery support services across Lehigh and Northampton counties. Founded in Allentown, Treatment Trends serves adults and adolescents through a full continuum of care, from residential treatment to community-based recovery support, with a mission rooted in meeting people where they are.

• 7 outpatient locations
• 40-bed residential program
• 100 employees

• Inpatient residential treatment
• Halfway home and recovery housing 
• Outpatient, IOP, and early intervention 
• Case management and recovery support
• Medication-assisted treatment and med management

Overview

Treatment Trends was built to serve people working through substance use and recovery, often at the most difficult point in their lives. But for most of the organization's history, clinical documentation was done entirely on paper. Charts were physical, tracking was manual, and when something was missing from a file, there was no system to catch it.

As the organization grew and took on more complex cases, those limitations got harder to work around. Incomplete charts surfaced during audits, and medication tracking gaps frequently led to incident reports. On the billing side, staff were handwriting claims or entering them into payer portals one at a time. The volume of administrative work kept growing, and it was pulling time away from the clinical work that mattered most.

In 2021, Treatment Trends partnered with Ease to move off paper entirely. Today, Ease supports Treatment Trends' clinical, billing, and administrative workflows across residential, outpatient, and community-based programs in two counties.

• Moved from paper-based operations to a fully digital clinical record across all programs
• Reduced auditor on-site time by hours per visit through centralized, structured documentation
• Eliminated manual claim entry, accelerating billing and reimbursement cycles
• Replicated full clinical workflows to launch new outpatient sites and reopen a residential program without rebuilding from scratch
• Established supervisor review routing and encounter-based documentation checks across all levels of care

Replacing paper with structure: compliance and audit readiness

Treatment Trends' documentation lived on paper for years. Charts were stored physically, and when something was missing, staff had to go find it. There was no system to flag a gap before it became a problem.

Medication tracking was a consistent source of incident reports. And when state agencies or managed care organizations came to review charts, the process was slow and stressful, and it regularly surfaced gaps that could have been caught earlier.

With Ease, Treatment Trends built encounter-based workflows that require every document to be completed before a session can be closed out. Supervisors review completed encounters through a built-in routing process, which adds a layer of oversight that wasn't possible on paper.

"Ease allowed us to customize our encounter templates to ensure we were audit-proof. If we get audited and fail to check a single checkbox, that puts us at risk, so having the ability to build in checks and balances has really helped." — John Dillensnyder, Executive Director

The difference showed up during external reviews. Auditors who used to spend full days on-site now move through the process much faster, and the feedback from both state reviewers and managed care organizations has been positive.

From handwritten claims to electronic billing

Before Ease, Treatment Trends' billing staff were generating claims by hand. In outpatient, that meant handwriting claims or pulling information from paper charts and re-entering it into payer portals one at a time. With contracts across three behavioral health MCOs and roughly 25 counties, the volume added up, the process was slow, and the risk of error increased.

"Before Ease, It was a nightmare. Taking all the information and then re-entering it so you could process a claim. It took forever. Now it's a lot easier."

With Ease, claims are generated directly from completed encounters and submitted electronically. The billing team still makes adjustments where needed, but the manual re-entry that used to eat up their day is gone and the risk of human error is all but eliminated.

"The actual submitting is so much easier, so much faster. We really like that." — Kate Donchez, Fiscal Manager

Connecting clinical documentation directly to billing helped Treatment Trends get claims out faster and get paid faster, which is especially important given the population they work with. Roughly 95% of their clients are on medical assistance, which means the organization's revenue is almost entirely tied to Medicaid reimbursement, without copays to help smooth out cash flows. 

Opening new locations without starting from scratch

When Treatment Trends opened a new outpatient site in Slatington, they needed it to exactly mirror the workflows already running at their Allentown location. With Ease, they were able to duplicate encounter setups, documentation templates, and program configurations without rebuilding anything.

"It was like a click of a button. They have things ready on their end and it's like, you just tell us when you need it and we can do it." — Sarah Falwell, Associate Director

The same was true when Treatment Trends reopened its residential program after a year and a half of renovations. The digital infrastructure was already there. Rather than spending weeks on configuration, the team went live and focused on ramping up admissions.

Treatment Trends doesn't have a large IT team or months to spend on setup. Being able to stand up new programs on a foundation that's already working means they can grow without taking on unnecessary operational risk or incurring additional IT costs. Opening new locations is now plug-and-play.

A partnership built on responsiveness

Treatment Trends' relationship with the Ease team goes beyond just the software. From the start, the approach was hands-on. Ease’s implementation specialist flew to Pennsylvania and worked alongside staff during the initial rollout, running interactive training sessions with groups of 16 to 20 people.

Day-to-day support runs through a ticketing system and regular monthly calls. The Ease team tracks which staff are attached to which issues and follows up on challenges across sites.

"If we say something's a problem, you'll get a response. They'll say, ‘did you try this, show me more, give me a screenshot.’ They're solution-based." — Sarah Falwell, Associate Director

Navigating a changing environment, together

Treatment Trends is operating in a behavioral health environment that’s increasingly complex. Co-occurring disorders are on the rise, synthetic drugs are changing the clinical picture, and lengths of stay continue to shrink. Documentation that's accurate and timely has never mattered more. And while transitioning off of their established paper-based system was a significant transition, the effort has proved more than worth it.

As Treatment Trends continues to expand its programming across Lehigh and Northampton counties, Ease has become a critical part of how the organization runs, connecting clinical, billing, compliance, and oversight in one system that streamlines operations so Treatment Trends can focus on patient care and business growth.