The treatment center marketing glossary
The words a treatment center meets when it plans a website: the compliance rules, the levels of care, the admissions language and the search terms. Each one defined in a sentence, explained for your website and sourced to the regulator, statute or platform that owns it.
- 37 terms, A to Z
- Regulatory and clinical terms sourced
- Last reviewed
Terms that start with a number
Back to A to ZTerms starting with A
Back to A to ZAdmissions coordinator
The treatment center staff member who answers inquiries, screens callers, checks insurance and books intake.
Admissions and operationsAEO (answer engine optimization)
Writing and structuring pages so AI assistants and search answer features can find and quote them directly.
Marketing and searchAftercare
Support after primary treatment ends: outpatient sessions, recovery housing, peer groups, alumni programs.
Clinical careAI visibility
Whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI name and cite your center when a family asks for treatment nearby.
Marketing and searchASAM Criteria
ASAM's standards for assessing a patient across six dimensions and placing them in a level of care.
Clinical care
Terms starting with B
Back to A to ZTerms starting with C
Back to A to ZCall tracking
Unique phone numbers, often swapped in by script, that show which ad, page or channel produced each call.
Marketing and searchCARF
An independent nonprofit accreditor whose standards cover behavioral health and opioid treatment programs.
ComplianceCensus
The number of patients currently admitted to a program, counted daily against licensed beds or program slots.
Admissions and operationsConsent mode
Google's way for tags to respect a visitor's cookie choices, sending less when consent is denied.
Marketing and searchConversion rate
The share of visitors who call, verify insurance or book an assessment, out of everyone who arrived on the site.
Marketing and search
Terms starting with D
Back to A to ZTerms starting with E
Back to A to ZE-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust: the qualities Google looks for in content, with trust first.
Marketing and searchEKRA (Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act)
The 2018 federal law that makes kickbacks for referrals to recovery homes, treatment facilities and labs a crime.
Compliance
Terms starting with G
Back to A to ZGEO (generative engine optimization)
Improving how often AI-written answers cite your site, a term from a 2023 research paper of the same name.
Marketing and searchGoogle Business Profile
The free Google listing that puts your center on Maps and in local results, with reviews and hours.
Marketing and search
Terms starting with H
Back to A to ZTerms starting with I
Back to A to ZTerms starting with J
Back to A to ZTerms starting with L
Back to A to ZLanding page
The page a visitor arrives on from an ad or search, ideally built for one audience and one action.
Marketing and searchLegitScript
The third-party certification Google and Meta require before a US provider can run addiction ads.
ComplianceLocal SEO
Getting found by people searching for treatment in your city, in Google Maps and in the regular results.
Marketing and search
Terms starting with M
Back to A to ZTerms starting with O
Back to A to ZTerms starting with P
Back to A to ZPatient brokering
Paying or taking payment for patient referrals, a crime under federal law and several state laws.
CompliancePHI (protected health information)
Health information that identifies a person, held by a covered provider, plan or one of their vendors.
CompliancePHP (partial hospitalization program)
Intensive day treatment, several hours a day on most weekdays, while the patient lives at home.
Clinical care
Terms starting with R
Back to A to ZTerms starting with S
Back to A to ZSAMHSA
The HHS agency that leads federal work on substance use and mental health, and runs FindTreatment.gov.
ComplianceSchema markup
Code that describes your center, services and pages to search engines in a standard vocabulary.
Marketing and searchSober living
Shared, substance-free recovery housing with peer support and house rules, usually without on-site clinical care.
Clinical careState licensing
The state's permission to run a program at a location, the base every other credential builds on.
Compliance
Terms starting with U
Back to A to ZTerms starting with V
Back to A to ZTerms starting with Y
Back to A to ZBrowse by topic
Compliance
The laws, certifications and accreditors that decide what a treatment center may say and advertise.
Clinical care
Levels of care and treatment terms, named the way families search and the way clinicians and payers use them.
Admissions and operations
The admissions and insurance words that sit between a website inquiry and an admitted patient.
Marketing and search
Search, AI and measurement terms, with what each one changes on a treatment center site.
How this glossary is written
- Every entry opens with a one-sentence definition that stands on its own, so a reader, or an AI engine, can quote it without the rest of the page.
- Regulatory and clinical entries link to their sources: the statute, the regulation, the agency, the accreditor or the platform's own policy page, and a public agency summary where the standard itself is not free to read.
- Every entry says what the term changes on a treatment center website, the part a website agency can speak to with authority.
- Nothing here is legal or medical advice. Where a question needs judgment, the entry says it belongs with your healthcare attorney or your clinical team.
For the decisions these words feed into, see the comparisons; to check your own site against several of them, try the free tools.
Frequently asked questions
No. KhanWork builds websites for treatment centers and healthcare practices; we are not a law firm or a clinical provider. Regulatory entries paraphrase the statute, regulation or agency page closely and link to it, and they say plainly when a question belongs with a healthcare attorney.
Regulatory and clinical entries come from the US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations, HHS, SAMHSA, CMS, ASAM, the accreditors and the ad platforms' own policies. Where a standard is not free to read, such as the full ASAM Criteria, the entry cites a public agency summary of it. Search entries cite Google's own documentation where it exists. Every entry that rests on a law, a regulator, a standard or a platform lists those sources at the foot of the page.
The glossary was last reviewed on 2026-10-15. Several of these rules changed recently, including 42 CFR Part 2 and the ASAM Criteria, and the entries describe the current versions.
Because that is how a glossary gets used: people, and AI engines, want the answer first. The rest of each entry explains the term, says why it matters for your website and links to the deeper KhanWork article on the subject.
Want to know which of these your website gets wrong?
Send your URL for the free funnel review. Within two business days you get a 3-minute video on the page your traffic lands on, the three places it is losing inquiries, and what ChatGPT and Perplexity say about your center. It is free, and no call is attached.