Rogers aims for flexibility to meet mental healthcare demand
Rogers Behavioral Health is prioritizing adaptability to meet people where they are — rather than expecting patients to come to them — as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes.
“It really has shaped how we deliver care and provide access for our services,” CEO Cindy Meyer said. “The consumer’s demanding that. They have a lot of choices about where they go and who they see.”
Meyer, who has more than 30 years experience in behavioral healthcare, joined Rogers in 2022 as chief operating officer. She took on the Oconomowoc-based provider’s top role last year.
She spoke to Wisconsin Health News, along with Brian Kay, Rogers’ chief strategy officer, about how Rogers is meeting demand.
Edited excerpts are below.
WHN: How are you changing to be more flexible?
Meyer: Certainly, the tele-platform (is one way) — a remote platform to get services, to be able to have those sessions remotely within your home and access that care where it’s more consumer friendly, from just where you’re at.
The other is looking at how to access on the front end. How timely can we be with helping to triage what your needs are and get you into the program within 24 hours or immediately?
Kay: We’re also continuing to expand across the state. We’re heading up to Manitowoc. That’s going to be a partnership with Lighthouse Recovery Community Center. That program has now opened up, so a small clinic in that way. And then later on this fall, we’re going to be opening up our Wausau clinic, so another way of expanding behavioral health services in the western part of the state.
And then the other one piece that we opened up within the last year is outpatient behavioral health services. We’re continuing to expand, but it’s medication management. We’re offering transcranial magnetic stimulation. And then we’re working on different ways of how we could offer outpatient counseling through those services as well.
Meyer: We’re finding out by doing and embedding ourselves in the community and doing some pre-work about surveying the community. ‘What do they want? What do they need?’ And then how do we build our programs around identified needs, instead of guessing or thinking we might know.
WHN: When it comes to western Wisconsin, are you planning further expansion, especially in areas that were served by Hospital Sisters Health System and Prevea Health, which departed the region earlier this year?
Meyer: That is an area that we continue to look at in terms of, ‘Who else is going in there? How can we be additive, not competitive? How can we fill the gaps, and what does that look like?’ That’s an ongoing conversation.
Wisconsin will definitely be an area that we expand in. One of the things that we’re very much aware of is that we have that whole continuum in Wisconsin. It’s like a hub-and-spoke model. If you started in inpatient with us and went to residential, then we have outpatient sites throughout the state where you can continue that treatment pretty prescriptively, which only provides gains for people.
Kay: Telehealth has been an excellent extender to get into the western parts of the state as well. We’ve done some targeted work of meeting with health systems out there, letting them know that we do have those services available. It’s been a way of helping out that community without even having a physical location.
WHN: Rogers has a presence in 10 states. Are you planning further expansions outside of the state?
Meyer: We are moving in the direction of expanding residential care. Quality residential care is needed in terms of what we do and how we do it. We are looking at Minnesota, and we are finalizing plans to build a residential (facility) in that area. We do have two outpatient clinics there …
Wisconsin and the Midwest are really where our strength is. There is a deficit in quality residential care across the country, so we’ll be selective in where we go and be able to have some type of continuum so that patients don’t come in and then they leave and they’re unsuccessful because there’s nobody to continue the care.
The Midwest is a very strong area for us to continue to grow in.
WHN: Workforce has posed a challenge. How are you recruiting?
Meyer: We are very unique in the position that we do employ our physicians. We have approximately 110 physicians across the country. They are being licensed in every state across the country. That is something we’re working on right now, so that we have the flexibility to be accessible to all in all 50 states, if there would need to be follow up.
We continue to recruit doctors, and we’ve been very successful at that. Although the rest of the country might be feeling that pain, we are lucky enough to say it hasn’t been that painful. We use (nurse practitioners and physician assistants) as well as psychologists, so a great mix of people. We continue to do recruitment every day and look at what the employee is asking for and what they need as we continue to look at our benefits.
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