Is AI Really Worth It? How to Measure ROI and VOI in Behavioral Health

Reports on the state of healthcare and human services are beginning to sound like a broken record. We get it—budgets are tight, margins are slim, and workforce shortages aren’t solving themselves anytime soon. 

What isn’t always making headlines is the real impact AI can have on those challenges—and we’re not just talking about how it saves clinicians time on documentation. To be clear, saving time is great. But on its own, it’s not enough to address the aforementioned challenges facing compassionate care organizations. 

What are the AI impacts that can move those needles? I’m so glad you asked. We’re prepared to walk you through the hard numbers and the “soft” value that may be tougher to quantify (but is just as impactful).

Is AI Really All It’s Cracked Up to Be?

Across healthcare, the hype around AI is loud—yet the results often fall short. In fact, 80% of healthcare AI implementations fail to scale beyond the pilot phase. They work in demos, they impress in controlled trials, but the moment they hit real workflows, real clinicians, and real clients, the wheels come off.

Why? Because most AI deployments aren’t designed around the realities of healthcare—fragmented systems, competing priorities, limited bandwidth for training, and teams already stretched to their limits. Without clear goals, thoughtful measurement, strong change management, and the right support, even the most promising tools get stuck in “pilot purgatory.”

But here’s the good news: Behavioral health organizations can break that pattern—and many already have.

While we may be a little biased 😉, our partners are not. Large community behavioral health and SUD orgs like Gulf Coast Center, Hillsides, Trilogy, Gaudenzia, and more have real-world experience with AI that tells the true ROI story. 

Their success highlights that AI can absolutely drive meaningful ROI (return on investment) and VOI (value on investment), but there are some clear caveats:

• You must know what to measure (and what not to chase).
• Your ROI metrics must align with clear business goals.

So, here’s what you need to know about the ROI of AI—whether you’re considering adding it to your org, you’re deep in an implementation process, or you’re just curious.

The Hard ROI Numbers: What to Measure

Most executive teams need a tangible, quantifiable return on any investment—technology or otherwise. And the reality is, AI really can drive those hard numbers. But in order to achieve the biggest gains, orgs must understand where the added dollars come from and how they tie back to your mission and priorities.

Below, we break down the four ROI levers your org should think about—and real results from Eleos customers, to give you an example of what your North Star could look like.

Turnover Reduction

Staff recruitment and retention have become one of the most urgent financial factors in compassionate care. When 1 in 3 mental health professionals leave their employers each year, the costs add up. On top of that, it’s estimated that in the next 15 years, there will be a shortage of nearly 88,000 mental health counselors and 114,000 addiction counselors. These are losses that organizations—and the communities they serve—simply can’t afford.

Replacing a single clinician costs roughly one-fifth of their annual salary (and that cost can be much higher for specialized roles), so if an organization has 100 providers earning $60,000 annually, that adds up to nearly $400,000 in losses every year. Not to mention the cost of productivity losses and plummeting morale for remaining staff.

A major cause of that turnover? Burnout—and documentation is one of the biggest drivers of it. In fact, a National Council for Mental Wellbeing survey found that 33% of providers spend the majority of their time on administrative tasks. 

But when documentation gets easier, stress goes down, and retention goes up. After implementing Eleos:

• Gulf Coast achieved a 19% reduction in annual staff turnover, saving the organization $767K per year. 
• Trilogy staff reported experiencing 90% less stress post-Eleos, and 78% of providers said Eleos positively impacted their tenure at the org.
• The Family Counseling Center had a 9% increase in retention.

Hillsides even had several departing staff members share that they hesitated to leave because their new employer didn’t have Eleos. The tool has even become a recruitment differentiator—for Hillsides, Horizon Health Services, GRAND Mental Health, and more—appearing in job postings and sparking interest from candidates who’ve heard about it elsewhere.

Every clinician your organization loses drives up direct and indirect costs, disrupts care, threatens culture, and results in lost revenue from unfilled caseloads. AI flips the equation—keeping clinicians supported, engaged, and more likely to stay.

Time Savings++

While time saved is often the oversold benefit of AI, it’s still an important ROI indicator—especially when you consider that documentation can take hours each day and plays a major role in clinician burnout. 

When AI lightens that burden, it doesn’t just create efficiency—it gives clinicians breathing room and leaders capacity they can reinvest in care delivery, training, supervision, or simply time for providers to recharge between sessions.

Across Eleos partners, we see impacts like:

• Documentation time cut by 70–80%;
• Notes submitted 64% faster; and
• Time per note reduced from 15-20 minutes down to just three.

Those minutes add up, especially multiplied over a full caseload. A clinician delivering five sessions a day saves about 108 hours per year—more than 2.5 weeks of full-time work. At an average salary of  $60,000, that’s roughly $3,240 in value per clinician per year, or $324K across a 100-clinician organization.

Turning Time Saved Into Capacity Gained

For most behavioral health leaders, the goal isn’t pushing clinicians to do more—it’s helping them use their time more effectively. Gulf Coast Center is a perfect example. They used the time they reclaimed with Eleos to deliver 7,141 additional services per year, driving $942K in new annual revenue—without hiring additional staff.

As Felicia Jeffery, CEO of Gulf Coast Center, put it, “This isn’t about squeezing more out of people. It’s about giving them back the time, tools, and trust to do what they do best—care.”

Keeping Notes Timely to Protect Revenue & Care Quality

Time savings also prevent a major operational headache: Late notes. 

When clinicians fall behind, the ripple effects touch everything from compliance to billing to care quality and continuity. Insurers—including Medicare and Medicaid—are more likely to flag or deny claims when documentation is signed more than 48–72 hours after a session. Delays can trigger missed units, force billing teams to unroll and reroll claims, and slow cash flow. 

AI helps eliminate these issues by supporting quick, consistent documentation, and our Eleos partners have proved it:

• At Hillsides, for example, notes went from being submitted five to seven days late to being submitted within 24 hours with Eleos. 
• The Gaudenzia team reduced note submission time to just 4.4 minutes.
• Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center has reached and maintained a 90% 24-hour note completion rate for their first four consecutive months with Eleos—and counting. Before Eleos, they were completing just 80% of notes within the 24-hour window.

Note timeliness also translates into real-time data that gives organizations a better grasp on the services they’re providing and billing for.

But timeliness isn’t just an operational issue—it’s a clinical one, too. When notes are late, clinicians have to pull session details from memory, and accuracy declines. With AI, they can complete documentation minutes after a session, helping them capture more accurate details, document interventions more thoroughly, and maintain a stronger “golden thread” across the treatment plan. So clinical quality goes up, and so do client outcomes.

Find out how Gaudenzia was able to increase the use of evidence-based techniques by 35% using Eleos.

Higher Client Attendance Rates and Fewer No-Shows

With no-show rates climbing as high as 60% in community mental health, even small improvements can translate into massive revenue gains. 

When we crunched the numbers using a conservative baseline no-show rate of 35%, we found that a 100-clinician organization can lose more than $3.2 million each year in missed sessions—that’s about $32,000 per clinician.

What closes that gap? Providers who are less stressed, more focused, and fully present. When providers are more engaged, clients feel it—and they keep showing up.

In fact, in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), for providers who used Eleos:

• Client attendance increased by 67%;
• Clients showed 2x higher engagement; and
• Symptom improvement was 3–4x greater.

Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center also reported that Eleos helped to bring their cancellation rate down from 21% in 2024 to 17.9% for the last six months of 2025.

Those numbers prove that better engagement isn’t just better for care—it’s better for business. And as we often hear in compassionate care, “No money, no mission.”

Compliance Gains

Documentation quality and compliance aren’t just clinical issues. From a financial perspective, the impact of documentation errors can turn into revenue drains in the form of denied claims, clawbacks, and wasted time. 

Improving Documentation Compliance & Oversight

Most organizations review only 5–10% of notes for compliance risk each quarter, relying on manual sampling and feedback loops that can lag months behind. That makes it easy for patterns of noncompliance to go unnoticed until they become costly.

But with Eleos Compliance, organizations like GRAND Mental Health and Merakey now scan 100% of notes daily—a 20x increase in coverage. This enables quality teams to focus their time on true problem areas and catch documentation issues before they trigger clawbacks.

Leveling-Up Note Quality

AI doesn’t just catch issues—it also helps clinicians prevent them from happening in the first place by providing suggestions that enable higher-quality notes from the start. 

Here are just a few results our data science team identified when analyzing the compliance impact of Eleos for several individual customers:

• 70% reduction in note redundancy;
• 42% increase in compliant plan notes;
• 118% increase in documented therapeutic interventions; and
• Nearly 2x more progress-related language captured in notes.

Avoiding Adding Costly Headcount to Keep Up With Demand

It may seem like the only way to keep up with ever-growing regulatory requirements is for behavioral health organizations to hire more QA team members. However, Gulf Coast Center found that with compliance-focused AI, they could empower their existing team members to accomplish more with less.

Through Eleos Compliance, they added $1.1 million in audit capacity at a fraction of what it would cost to increase staffing. Instead of reviewing 15% of notes manually over a year, Gulf Coast could review 100% of notes in a single day, allowing their CQI team to focus only on risky notes.

As Jeffery stated, “Now we can audit 100% of notes and only spend time reviewing the ones that need attention. We didn’t cut any positions—we’re just doing more with less. And I’m taking the savings and putting it toward increasing salaries.”

With Eleos, Gulf Coast Center teams are able to work smarter, not harder—redirecting their time to the highest-impact areas while reinvesting savings back into their workforce.

Read the full story of how Gulf Coast Center reached 8x ROI with Eleos.

The Softer Side of ROI: Defining VOI

What VOI Really Means

ROI tells the financial story. VOI—value on investment—tells the human one. But these “softer” outcomes aren’t really all that soft; they’re the factors that determine whether clinicians stay, clients engage, and organizations build cultures that attract and retain top talent.

While these benefits may not always appear as line items on a budget, they show up in areas that can certainly drive revenue for your organization. 

Key VOI Dimensions to Track

Reducing Staff Stress and Supporting Job Satisfaction

With continued workforce shortages, burnout is one of the most significant threats to behavioral health organizations. Heavy administrative burden is a major driver of job dissatisfaction, and the National Council for Mental Wellbeing reports that one-third of the workforce spends the majority of their time on administrative tasks, with 68% of professionals saying that work detracts from time spent with clients.

By removing a significant portion of the documentation burden, AI helps clinicians refocus on the work that matters most. When they’re able to take vacation time without productivity concerns or even just have more breathing room between sessions, staff satisfaction and overall morale go up.

Across Eleos partners, the impact is unmistakable:

• At Trilogy, 90% of providers using Eleos reported a reduction in job-related stress.
• Lighthouse Behavioral Wellness Centers’ team members reported 93% satisfaction with the Eleos tool.

When clinicians feel supported, valued, and heard, satisfaction rises—and so does the likelihood that they’ll stay with your organization.

Improving Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is no longer a “nice to have” in behavioral health—it’s a retention strategy. 

Late-night documentation, often referred to as “pajama time,” is a huge driver of burnout and turnover. With Eleos, providers consistently report getting their evenings back. 

“There is absolutely no after-hours note-writing anymore,” shared Trilogy’s Darren Dunham. “I’m able to focus on self-care, and I’m able to go back to school full-time as well. So, this has really changed my life tremendously. I love it, and I can’t say enough about it.”

This regained balance doesn’t just improve morale—it prevents turnover, protects care continuity, and strengthens the overall health of your workforce.

Enhancing the Client Experience

When clinicians don’t have to focus on documentation during a session (because ambient AI is capturing the notes for them), they’re less rushed and more engaged, allowing them to interact more effectively with clients—and those clients notice. 

At Hillsides, this showed up clearly in their client satisfaction data. In a survey of 200 clients, nearly 99% reported that their providers were more present and more engaged during sessions. Many noted that clinicians were listening fully instead of typing throughout the visit—something staff echoed as well.

Gulf Coast Center saw a similar ripple effect. As staff morale strengthened and clinicians gained more time and focus, client experience improved right alongside it. 

“We just got our latest customer satisfaction scores back. We’re at 96% for the people who took the survey,” Jeffery described. “And our clinicians are saying they can now see their whole caseload and truly meet their needs.”

When clinicians have the time, energy, and emotional bandwidth to be fully present, the client relationship deepens. That’s true VOI: The human impact that strengthens engagement, trust, and the overall care experience—benefits no spreadsheet can fully capture.

Hidden VOI: The Right AI Partnership

The amount of value you get out of your AI solution depends heavily on the partner you choose. That’s not just because of the quality of the technology itself, but also the way the vendor supports your staff’s adoption and ongoing use of the platform.

At Eleos, we believe AI should lighten the load, not add to it—which is why we intentionally designed our solution to be lightweight, minimally disruptive, and not dependent on your EHR or IT resources. (You may hear us say our solution is built by clinicians, for clinicians.) In fact, 95% of implementation work is done by the Eleos team, reducing friction for staff while building confidence and buy-in.

Organizations repeatedly tell us that our partnership is a huge part of the value of our solutions. AI stops being “another tool” and becomes a support system—a signal that leadership is investing in clinicians’ wellbeing, not extracting more productivity from them.

For Gulf Coast Center, the partnership was just as meaningful as the product. Jeffery said she evaluates any potential vendor based on the people behind the technology—because for her, a true partnership isn’t transactional; it’s relational.

“A partnership doesn’t mean someone gives you a product and walks away,” Jeffery said. “It means they listen to you, help you solve your problems, and walk with you every step of the way.”

Eleos became exactly that kind of partner for Gulf Coast. The team collaborated closely with their clinicians, responding to their ideas and feedback with speed and care. “It’s been a beautiful relationship,” Jeffery added. “They worked just as hard as we did.”

Lighthouse Behavioral Wellness Centers had a similar experience. Their Chief Clinical Officer, Tracie Del Torto, emphasized the importance of selecting a partner who understood their workflows and seamlessly integrated into the work their clinicians were already doing.

Six months after Lighthouse went live with Eleos: 

• Clinicians used Eleos Documentation to write over 40,000 progress notes;
• Documentation time decreased by 77%, resulting in over 8,000 hours saved; and
• They reached nearly 100% adoption across all eligible users.

“Looking back or thinking about other leaders [considering rolling out an AI tool], I would definitely say go for it, because it is definitely worth the time and the investment,” said Del Torto.  

Results like these aren’t just because of AI. These teams had the right partnership in place, their leaders were bought in, and their staff took adoption seriously. Truly the perfect storm for VOI.

The Road to ROI/VOI with AI

Pinpoint What You Are Actually Trying to Solve

Not to spend too much time on our soapbox, but there truly is no shortage of challenges plaguing the behavioral health space right now. Workforce shortages, Medicaid cuts stemming from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—the list goes on. But figuring out what problem you are specifically trying to solve with AI gives you clarity on the results you’re trying to achieve—and thus, what ROI and VOI really look like for your organization. 

For instance, are you trying to:

• Reduce turnover?
• Protect revenue and reduce denials and clawbacks?
• Increase capacity without hiring additional staff?
• Improve client outcomes and engagement?

At Gulf Coast Center, the leadership team looked at AI as a way to face workforce shortages head-on. They saw work-life balance as a real challenge for their staff and believed it was contributing to turnover. Rather than starting with a goal of maximizing revenue and productivity (although those gains did follow), they took a provider-centric approach to AI, believing the cost of the solution was justified if it could give their team time back to spend with their families or on self-care—ultimately improving morale and retention.

Not identifying your “why” ahead of time—and chasing the wrong success indicators—comes at the expense of your staff, especially when it comes to productivity. If you start with the intent to reallocate any time savings to increased caseloads, you may see short-term gains, but it’ll likely backfire in the long run—by way of turnover, lower morale, and rising burnout, which are all likely things you’re trying to prevent.

Set Realistic Expectations

One of the most important parts of achieving true ROI and VOI with AI is setting the right expectations from the start. AI isn’t a magic switch that delivers instant productivity spikes or overnight financial gains—and positioning it that way can undermine staff trust before the rollout even begins.

Instead, leaders who see the strongest results frame AI as an investment in people, stability, and sustainability. At Gulf Coast, Jeffery was intentional about this from day one. In her words:

“When I went to my board, I didn’t promise increased productivity or big dollar savings,” said Jeffery. “I told them we had a workforce shortage, and the top reason was work-life balance. I told them we needed to reduce the stress of documentation, and it was going to cost us. But I knew it would pay off.”

That clarity mattered. By orienting the investment around supporting staff wellbeing—not squeezing out more output—Gulf Coast laid the foundation for high adoption, high trust, and the significant ROI and VOI they later achieved.

Decide on Your Metrics & Track Impact Over Time

The advice from our best partner organizations? Leaders should frame and measure AI’s impact around stabilizing and supporting staff, then allow sustainable productivity gains to emerge as a secondary benefit. 

As Trilogy’s leadership points out, using AI like Eleos to justify higher quotas defeats the purpose. The real value is in reducing documentation burden, restoring work-life balance, and allowing providers to be fully present with clients.

“We see this as an opportunity to make a very challenging job less burdensome for our staff,” said Amanda Rankin, former COO of Trilogy. “There is ROI to be had with this product, but staff productivity is certainly not where I would go after ROI.”

That mindset should shape the metrics you choose. In the early months, leaders should put more weight on indicators such as:

• Reduction in documentation time and after-hours work; 
• Improvements in provider stress, satisfaction, and intent to stay;
• Turnover reduction and tenure extension; and
• Client engagement and outcomes (e.g., no-show reductions and symptom improvement).

Start with a Simple Baseline

Before go-live, identify a small set of baseline measures that reflect the ROI and VOI you hope to achieve. You don’t need dozens—just the ones tied directly to your organization’s goals and pain points. Examples include:

• Time to Complete Notes: Are clinicians gaining back meaningful time—and how quickly?
• Clinician Satisfaction and Stress: Are staff reporting less administrative strain and more balance?
• Note Quality and Compliance Signals: Is documentation becoming cleaner, more complete, and more defensible?
• Progress-Related or Intervention Language: Are notes becoming more thorough and better aligned with clinical goals?

Measure Progress at 3, 6, and 12 Months

AI’s value compounds over time. Early implementation is about user confidence, training, and workflow alignment—not peak ROI. Tracking progress at regular intervals helps you surface trends, celebrate wins, address friction points before they become issues, and ultimately, achieve the highest possible ROI over time.

Together, these measures create a clear, data-backed picture of how AI is supporting your workforce, strengthening compliance, and reducing organizational risk—all while enabling the long-term ROI and VOI that matter most.

For a deeper dive into best practices for implementing an AI solution, download our complete guide for behavioral health leaders.

Measuring with Confidence: How Eleos Makes ROI and VOI Visible

At Eleos, we know that in order to continue providing great care and impacting more lives in the communities you serve, there has to be a good business case for your organization to partner with us. That’s why we make the ROI and VOI of Eleos easy to see.

In our Documentation Dashboard, leaders can see usage patterns, efficiency metrics, and organizational impact in an easy-to-read interface. You can even track key metrics like time savings, completion rates, productivity improvements, note quality, and provider satisfaction. 

On top of that, we offer dedicated learning and support resources to ensure your organization sees the results you’re looking for. Our Customer Success team continually monitors usage, reports on key performance indicators (KPIs), communicates essential updates to your staff, and aligns your internal teams so everyone stays on the same page.

Curious about what your AI ROI could look like? Use our ROI calculator to see the dollar value Eleos could bring to your organization.

The ROI of AI in Behavioral Health Is About People, Not Just Numbers

The most powerful returns from AI aren’t always visible on spreadsheets. 

The real results show up in clinicians who finally get their evenings back. Teams who feel supported instead of overwhelmed. Clients who experience deeper presence and connection—and keep coming back as a result.

While there are real financial gains to be made, the value behind them is what truly transforms organizations. Because AI isn’t here to squeeze more out of clinicians; it’s here to give them back time, balance, and the ability to focus on care.

That’s the return that lasts. And that’s the return we’re committed to helping you achieve.

If you’re ready to explore what meaningful tech ROI and VOI could look like for your organization, request a personalized demo today.