Ads for drug and alcohol treatment soon will pop up again on Google searches — ending a company-imposed hiatus — but only from rehab centers that clear independent background screenings, the web giant said.
“We work to help healthcare providers — from doctors to hospitals and treatment centers — get online and connect with people who need their help,” said David Graff, senior director of global product policy for Google. “Substance abuse is a growing crisis and has led to deceptive practices by bad actors.”
Google is partnering with LegitScript, an Oregon-based company that does verification and monitoring to screen out scammers among online pharmacies. LegitScript is putting together a new certification program for drug and alcohol addiction treatment providers that includes criminal background checks. Oly those who pass can buy Google AdWords.
Getting that approval will not be inexpensive. The application fee is $995, pass or fail; and the annual fee for certification is $1,995 a year, according to LegitScript.
“All of us at LegitScript are really excited about this new program,” said CEO John Horton in a blog post. “In many ways, it’s a natural extension of the work we’ve done for years to make the rogue internet pharmacy problem — a driver of prescription drug abuse and other problems — smaller.”
The Southern California News Group spent a year probing the addiction industry and found it peppered with financial abuses that bleed untold millions from public and private pockets, and ineffective treatments that can endanger lives. Google ads didn’t help.
“(P)atients and their families need to know which treatment providers are credible and legitimate, and which ones should be avoided,” Horton wrote. “We hope that our program will help provide patients and our partners (like Google) information about which programs provide genuine treatment and which are, in essence, scams.”
The program, which will resume in July, will start slowly – certifying just 30 or so for the first few months as LegitScript ramps up its vetting process, Horton said.
Industry professionals were glad to hear of the change in Google AdWords, but were somewhat doubtful about whether bad actors could be completely weeded out. There are no universal standards to rate rehab centers.
“If they can (screen) and do it well, it opens up an information stream for people seeking treatment,” said Jerry Jenkins, chairman of the National Certification Commission for Addiction Professionals. “But I don’t know how they’ll say ‘this is a good actor’ or ‘this is not a good actor.’”
Dave Sheridan, on the board of the Chandler Lodge Foundation, which runs a sober home in Los Angeles, said vetting was a good compromise.
“My guess is there are some bad operators who will find their way through. But anything is better than nothing,” said Sheridan.
Mark Mishek, president and CEO of the Hazelden Betty Ford Center, has been pushing for reforms to improve quality and prevent unscrupulous practices like deceptive marketing for some time.
“This solution from Google seems like a reasonable way forward,” Mishek said in a statement. “We want individuals and families to be able to find quality care quickly but also need to make sure Google is not a playground for fraudulent marketers. The devil will be in the details on these standards. So, we’ll have to see how they work in practice. But conceptually, this is a sensible step.”
Kyle McHenry, CEO of Vertex Healthcare Services, a billing and consulting firm, thinks the move is a good one. “I wish they had done that three years ago,” he said.
Google, as the nation’s No. 1 addiction treatment referrer, has a special obligation to ensure that it’s not sending vulnerable people into harm’s way, activists have said. The move cut off at least $78 million annually worth of advertising in the U.S. alone, research firm Kantar Media told Reuters.
“This is a complex issue but we believe our partnership with LegitScript is a great first step in the US to help better connect people with the treatment they need,” said Google’s Graff.
The AdWords problem was brought to Google’s attention last year by a nonprofit called FacingAddiction.org. It was founded by Jim Hood, who lost his 20-year-old son to an overdose after maddening years trying to navigate the treatment universe, which felt more like finding a restaurant on Yelp than locating life-or-death help.
His organization has developed free resources on a wide range of addiction-related help – from prevention to physicians to therapists to treatment centers – but couldn’t compete with the big for-profit players. At FacingAddiction’s urging, Google stopped accepting rehab ads.
This new vetting process is a step in the right direction, Hood said, but he is looking forward to more.
Even after vetting, “the preponderance of what you’re going to see are ads for treatment centers that are probably pretty expensive and represent a very small fraction of the total universe of places and things and people that are out there that could be helpful for people on the addiction landscape,” Hood said. “They’ll be from Laguna Beach or Delray Beach – and most people are new to this and don’t know what they don’t know.
“Not everyone needs to immediately go into residential treatment,” he said. “And best practices say that people should look for help close to home, where they have support. We want people to be able to get that information, too.”
Updated 4/23/2018 at 11:30 a.m. with Mishek comment