Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software tools are rapidly changing how healthcare providers operate, and treatment centers are no exception. Streamlining intake processes, saving labor hours for front office staff, and recognizing patterns that can lead to better diagnoses make it a powerhouse for busy treatment centers. But many are still wary of using AI, especially for marketing.
Although generative AI may inspire concern for treatment centers for privacy concerns, AI tools specifically designed for healthcare providers offer much greater security. When used judiciously, AI can save time and effort in nearly all departments. According to a recent study, 89% of healthcare professionals surveyed said they were at least evaluating AI products, experimenting with them, or had implemented AI.
To help determine whether AI is right for your treatment center, let’s examine the pros and cons of using AI in marketing and the patient experience.
The pros and cons of AI for treatment centers
Treatment centers that implement AI-powered software in safe and appropriate ways to help them with their marketing and patient experience efforts can reap many benefits, including more leads, conversions, and satisfied patients. In fact, 41% of healthcare organizations say their marketing team already uses AI.
So, what’s keeping your treatment center from adding new tools and finding new use cases for AI? Let’s examine common concerns.
Con #1: Data security and privacy concerns
Addiction treatment is one of the most sensitive areas of healthcare. It is subject to both HIPAA oversight and 42 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 2. Treatment facilities must follow all privacy and security regulations related to patients' protected health information (PHI) to maintain HIPAA compliance.
Since disclosure of substance abuse and the stigma of mental illness can damage many parts of a patient’s life, concerns about whether AI can be used in a way that supports HIPAA compliance are valid. In addition to concerns about how to use AI in a HIPAA-compliant manner, there are also huge concerns about the open-source nature of popular GenAI models, which means sensitive patient data could be exposed to competitors or even hackers. Given the sensitive nature of most treatment facilities, patient privacy is the highest priority.
Pro #1: AI can help you get more value from your data, securely
AI can be used to enrich data to help you achieve your marketing goals, while still keeping it protected. CallRail’s Healthcare Plan automatically redacts sensitive patient-protected health information from call transcripts, enforces obligatory log-outs to prevent PHI from becoming public, provides full audit trail logging, and even features unique logins and credentials for every user, which helps eliminate the potential for PHI to be accidentally exposed to employees who don’t need access to that information.
At the same time, we know how important it is for treatment centers to keep PHI secure, which is why we integrate with healthcare privacy platforms like Freshpaint. It can help bridge any remaining gap between patient privacy and digital marketing.
Con #2: AI is impersonal
Having a good patient experience is important to all patients. According to a survey, 52% of patients said a key part of a good patient experience is being treated with respect. Almost as many (46%) said they want to be addressed as a person. Given these concerns, handing over content creation or customer interactions to AI can feel daunting. While an AI-powered chatbot might be more efficient than a human in a call center, you also don’t want patients to feel like you’ve delegated patient service to a robot. Trust is the key to building patient relationships.
Pro #2: AI can improve the patient experience
Worries that AI will make patient interactions feel impersonal are reasonable, but just like any other type of tool, it’s how you use AI that matters. Using AI to speed training and create more sensitive interactions can help your treatment facility stand above the rest.
Since AI can be trained to meet your facility's specific needs, every phone call can deliver higher levels of care. For example, if a caller inquires about dual diagnosis treatment, AI-powered call tracking can instantly flag the inquiry, categorize it as high-priority, and provide staff with key details from past interactions—ensuring the patient receives the right information and a compassionate response.
With CallRail’s AI-powered Premium Conversation Intelligence™, which transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes each call, you can quickly assess your patients’ needs and concerns and respond appropriately with a human touch. For instance, Premium Conversation Intelligence can identify and extract common keywords and topics from call transcripts. This data reveals recurring themes, such as frequently asked questions, common complaints, and most needed services. Your treatment center could then use these insights to tailor your marketing campaigns to address the most pressing patient concerns.
For example, if multiple callers express anxiety about insurance coverage for inpatient treatment, your facility could create dedicated web content, social media posts, or a patient-friendly guide explaining accepted insurance plans, financing options, and out-of-pocket costs—helping ease concerns before a patient even picks up the phone.
Con #3: AI seems too complicated to use
Let’s face it: new technology is risky, and for treatment centers especially, risk is scary. With AI, some risk comes from its perceived complexity. Identifying the right use cases for your center, selecting the right tools, training your staff, and changing workflows can all seem daunting. Figuring this out takes time and money. And, if there aren’t clear use cases and ROI attached, the long-term benefits may not be worth the short-term impact on business.
Pro #3: AI saves time and money
Using a computer or a spreadsheet for the first time probably also felt complicated – and took some time to learn. However, you know that using these tools, compared to pen, paper, and calculators, has saved an enormous amount of time, making the upfront investment clearly worth it. CallRail’s AI-powered software is intuitive, allowing you to quickly use tools like call sentiments, conversation coaching, and keyword spotting. Even if it takes some time to learn new AI tools, the time savings will be worth it once you do.
To get the greatest return on investment, focus on AI solutions that take care of time-intensive tasks to free up time for patient care. With the right use cases and tools, AI can help solve complex problems without adding time. For example, with Premium Conversation Intelligence, our customers spend 60% less time analyzing calls each week, and they’re using that time to train staff better, increase their productivity, and improve the patient experience.
Con #4: AI marketing can hurt your brand
Although GenAI tools may accelerate creative marketing efforts, many consumers are less excited. In fact, consumers are more likely to say that the use of AI makes them distrusting (40%), rather than trusting (19%), of a brand. In a market where trust is the most important factor for patients when choosing a mental healthcare provider, there is caution and hesitancy around using GenAI for marketing.
Pro #4: AI helps make your marketing better
While poorly created AI images shared on social media can be bad for your marketing efforts, there are many ways AI can elevate your campaigns without impacting your brand perception. From uncovering insights to improving your marketing campaigns and maximizing the value of each marketing dollar spent to increasing lead conversion rates and decreasing patient churn, AI can help you tackle these problems faster and better than ever.
At CallRail, we’re using AI to tackle complex challenges, like assessing the contents of a conversation quickly and efficiently. Using multi-conversation insights, CallRail can give marketers instant access to a 3-6 sentence summary for each call, average call sentiment, notable trends behind positive and negative interactions, and a summary of commonly asked questions.
For example, if multiple callers inquire about medication-assisted treatment (MAT) options for opioid addiction, AI can highlight this trend. This allows your team to adjust digital ad targeting, create specific landing pages about MAT programs, or train intake staff to address these inquiries more effectively. Such analysis would take hours and hours for your marketing team to do manually, but with AI, you have call insights at your fingertips to help drive messaging and keyword decisions that can improve your marketing attribution and patient experience.
Con #5: Adapting AI tools might cause disruption
As a modern treatment center, your tech stack is the engine that runs your business. When onboarding any new technology, there are always concerns about how well it will integrate with the existing technology and tools you use, and, as always in healthcare, whether it supports HIPAA compliance. There may also be concerns about how AI tools can fit into your existing workflows without disruption.
Pro #5: AI helps people do their job better
Pairing the right AI tool for roles with repetitive tasks can be a win for your staff and your facility. For example, keeping up with treatment trends is important for marketers to improve messaging and campaigns. An AI-powered tool analyzing conversations and providing call highlights can help identify keywords and Google Ad opportunities, so your center can focus on implementing the most successful marketing strategy rather than listening to hours of call recordings. In addition, CallRail's AI-powered Convert Assist helps treatment centers provide a better patient experience. With AI-generated call coaching, treatment center staff can identify what went well and what to improve after every conversation.
What’s more, with a solution like CallRail, which offers a Healthcare Plan and signs a business associate agreement (BAA), you are assured that we support HIPAA controls and 42 CFR Part 2 within our service offerings. This ensures that your call tracking doesn’t expose you to potential fines or litigation. Moreover, we also integrate with other marketing tools, like Google Ads, GA4, and more, making it easy to integrate our solution into your existing technologies and workflows.
Experience AI that actually benefits you with CallRail
If you’re still worried about using AI in your treatment center, start with a trusted solution like CallRail that has proven ROI for AI-powered tools and a commitment to responsible AI development. You can talk to CallRail’s experts or test the product for yourself with a 14-day free trial.
