What Is Patient Brokering and How Can You Help Stop It?

May 3, 2019 Marcus Hansen

According to the CDC, 70,237 drug overdose-related deaths occurred in the United States in 2017. Opioids were one of the top causes of death. The drug overdose-related death rate in Florida rose by 5.7 percent from 2016 to 2017.

Did you know this state is one of the top destinations for patient brokering patients? If it's the first time you hear this term, you should start getting familiar with it since it's one of the causes of our drug addiction crisis.

Don't know what we're talking about? We'll tell you all there is to know about body brokering in the addiction treatment industry and how you can help. Read on to learn the basics about the patient broker epidemic.

Patient Brokering: The Plague That's Destroying the Addiction Treatment Industry

When you hear body brokering, you might be thinking about human trafficking. However, it refers to the drug addiction treatment industry. Body brokering is an illegal practice where someone recruits a patient for a treatment center.

These brokers prey on patients promising an all expenses paid luxury life and recovery at an addiction treatment center. Typically, patient brokers provide patients with health insurance coverage and airfares to the treatment facilities.

Brokers enroll the patients on health insurance plans using bogus addresses and information. Most of the time, the marketers, brokers, or family members pay the patient's coverage.

Marketers pay these brokers between $500 to $5,000 dollars. Depending on their agreement, these companies may pay them on a per head or monthly fee basis.

Besides the illegality of the practice, body brokering is contributing to the rise in drug overdose-related deaths. Many brokered patients are dying due to opioid overdoses suffered after being recruited.

Can You Help Stop It?

As a treatment facility owner, you may believe you can't help stop this crisis. Yet, that's far from the truth. It all starts with learning as much as you can about how patient brokers recruit their patients.

Most patient brokers recruit their patients at AA meetings, drug, and rehab centers. It may be difficult to find if the patient was brokered based on where they learned about your facility but you can develop your own system.

As a treatment center owner, you should set your own onboarding system to assess if the patient is being brokered into your facility. Conduct an initial and comprehensive assessment that can help you find out if the patient is a good fit for your treatment center.

If you want to protect and build your center's reputation, you must try your best not to admit brokered patients. Besides the practice being illegal, the admittance of these patients will only promote this insurance fraud scheme.

The Bottom Line

Patient brokering is a serious illegal practice that's damaging the drug addiction treatment industry. When you choose to open a treatment center, you want to help people, not prey on them. Even though you don't recruit these patient brokers, you must try your best to prevent admitting these patients to put a halt to this illegal practice.

Body brokering prevention starts with developing your own thorough onboarding system to identify brokered patients. You should also consider hiring the best marketing agency to market your drug treatment center. The right firm won't hire patient brokers to bring patients to your door.

At The Drug Rehab Agency, we're dedicated to the success of rehab centers by using the best marketing strategies such as addiction content marketing, not body brokering. Want to bring more patients the right way?