Butler Center for Research
Patient Outcomes Study Results at Hazelden Betty Ford
Butler Center for Research - July 2026
Download the Patient Outcomes Study Results Research Update.
The Butler Center for Research recently released its most recent report of patient outcomes using all data collected in 2025 at Hazelden Betty Ford. We routinely track patient progress and conduct thousands of phone interviews with patients across treatment settings, including residential, virtual and intensive outpatient services, to assess for abstinence, quality of life, and commitment to Twelve Step programming or similar peer support groups.
The findings below are organized by time since discharge from treatment.
|
Abstinent |
77.6% |
|
No or Mild Cravings |
71.8% |
|
Change to Quality of Life |
84.3% |
|
Abstinent |
70% |
|
No or Mild Cravings |
79.4% |
|
Change to Quality of Life |
87.4% |
|
Attending Monthly Meetings |
62.4% |
The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is dedicated to improving the overall well-being of patients. As a result, at 12-month follow-ups, approximately 85 percent of the inpatient population reported having good or better overall health, and 86 percent reported having good or better quality of life.
Patient Diagnosis
Most patients at Hazelden Betty Ford have both a substance use and at least one mental health diagnosis. The average number of diagnoses for our patients is 3.7 with the most common diagnoses in the charts below.
|
Alcohol-Related Disorders |
92.2% |
|
Cocaine-Related Disorders |
82.1% |
|
Other Stimulant-Related Disorders |
77.3% |
|
Cannabis-Related Disorders |
58.0% |
|
Anxiety Disorders |
74.0% |
|
Depressive Disorders |
60.8% |
|
PTSD/Grief |
38.0% |
|
ADHD |
12.1% |
Life-Long Recovery Pilot
At Hazelden Betty Ford, we recognize that recovery is a lifelong process requiring sustained support beyond initial treatment. Life-long recovery (LLR) is an initiative to offer more aftercare services with increased check-in calls, greater engagement with alumni programs and use of a digital platform called MORE (My Ongoing Recovery Experience). The LLR pilot took place at Center City and The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage and compared a baseline set of patients with patients in the LLR program. Results so far are impressive:
Quality of life is good or better:
Baseline: 56.90%
LLR at 1 month: 91.50%
LLR at 3 months: 88.5%
Return to use of alcohol or drugs:
Baseline: 88.6%
LLR at 1 month: 7.2%
LLR at 3 months: 19.20%
About the Survey
Hazelden Betty Ford takes a wide-scale systematic approach to data collection compared to many treatment programs. Staff at the Butler Center for Research sent more than 10,000 surveys to a randomly selected subset of discharged patients who were in all levels of care. The time period of the survey was January 1 to December 31, 2025. More than 3,500 responses were received and analyzed for this report. For more findings and background on the report itself, please click on the link to the complete report at the top of this article.
