“You’re going to get 100% out of what you put in, and BuildFire will match your effort 100%. We freakin’ love BuildFire.”

Renaissance Ranch is a dual-licensed men’s adult residential and outpatient treatment program for substance abuse and mental health.

Between Utah and Idaho, there are three residential locations and one outpatient facility—each providing a wide range of services from sober living, detox treatment, intervention help, experiential therapy, and so much more.

They typically have between 80-100 residential patients and 200-250 people in outpatient treatment at any given time.

For more than 20 years, Renaissance Ranch has been helping men nationwide recover from addiction.

When patients leave residential treatment, they’re quickly disconnected from their support communities as they return to their day-to-day lives. Plus, many patients end up with a new phone or new phone number, making it even harder to stay in touch and succeed in their recovery.

This is what inspired Renaissance Ranch to seek a mobile solution.

“We wanted to have a way where they can easily stay connected so they didn’t feel alone,” explains Preston Dixon, the COO of Renaissance Ranch.

As someone who has been through recovery, Preston understands first-hand how important it is for patients to have quick access to support and resources to aid with recovery.

Since many programs are covered by insurance, carriers are asking to see results before approving facilities. But without an app, it was nearly impossible to track patient progress once they left the Ranch.

While the team at Renaissance Ranch knew they wanted a mobile app to address these problems, they faced an additional hurdle—the cost. Their top priority is patient care, and they don’t have the budget to spend upwards of $50,000 to $100,000 developing an app.

“The idea of having an app seemed so scary in the beginning because I thought it would be so expensive to do. Until we found BuildFire and realized—oh my gosh, the tech is so cool!”

Renaissance Ranch’s app development journey did not begin with BuildFire. Due to budget constraints, they went with an alternative app builder that was less expensive. But this didn’t yield the results they were looking for.

“I quickly realized you get what you pay for,” says Preston.

After a failed attempt with another app builder, Preston turned to BuildFire to make his vision a reality. “I fell in love with BuildFire quick,” he says. “It was just so simple, and it worked.”

The app immediately addressed all of the initial problems that Renaissance Ranch wanted to solve. It instantly gave patients 24/7 support at the touch of their fingers.

People use the app to check in every day and use the integrated calendar to see upcoming sessions with their therapists. They also have access to community message boards where they can chat with friends who are also going through recovery.

To further drive engagement, Preston added a gamification feature to the app. Users can earn points for doing things like calling a sponsor, working out, meditating, or reading recovery literature. These points can be redeemed for items in the app’s “Ranch Store.”

Users have an incentive to work hard at their own recovery. They can see who’s earning the most points through the app’s leaderboard. The Ranch will also run regular promotions—like taking the top points leaders to a Utah Jazz game.

“We’ve made it really easy for guys to have accountability,” says Preston. “Recovery rates have improved. Our referral rates have improved. And we’re retaining more clients.”

Since launching the app, referral rates have increased by 15%, and the Ranch has been able to track 90% of patient outcomes once they leave the facility. Renaissance Ranch opened a new facility in Idaho and recently partnered with NAATP (The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers), all due to the app’s tremendous success.

While the idea for the Renaissance Ranch mobile app was based on solving a few problems, it ultimately turned into something much larger.

“It started off as a client-facing app. But then I quickly realized that it can be an employee-facing app too,” says Preston.

Renaissance Ranch uses an employee version of the app to support clinicians, frontline staff, and administrators with onboarding documents, expense reimbursements, accreditation training, video training, and more. They’ve also saved a ton on printing costs, as so many documents can now be accessed digitally.

Therapists can also see who’s active on the app and who’s not, which tells them which patients need more attention—further supporting recovery success rates.

The app has been so successful that Preston and the team at Renaissance Ranch recognized the opportunity to support other treatment facilities across the country.

“BuildFire allowed us to not only build an app that was really successful for the Ranch. But because it was so successful, we started white labeling it for other local programs.”

In addition to their own app, Renaissance Ranch has over 50 white-label clients. These mobile apps are just as impactful to patients in other facilities.

One particular instance stands out. Preston recalls speaking with a white-label client at a women’s facility in Washington. The client explained how one patient was really struggling and having lots of issues with her therapist. Using the app completely changed the course of her treatment, and she ultimately signed up to be a sponsor to help others. “The app saved this girl’s life,” says Preston.

When asked to describe BuildFire in one sentence, Preston summed up the relationship in just one word—“Partnership.”

“The more that we’ve grown, the more support BuildFire has given us.”