Community Psychiatric Clinic and Sound Integration: It’s About Serving Our Clients

By Patrick Evans, Sound President & CEO

Our recent announcement that CPC and Sound would combine was a pretty big deal. With the closing, we became a much larger company with more service locations, expanded programs and a larger residential facility presence.  We likely have more ability to influence conversation when it comes to funding negotiations. Our new partnership has even garnered some media coverage.

But I believe that combining CPC and Sound is, primarily, about better serving our clients and improving their access to quality and comprehensive healthcare.

Combining our two organizations brings to mind our organization’s strategic plan – four areas of focus that all point directly to best serve our clients. Below is a look at how our Strategic Road Map — Team Members, Care Outcomes, Access and Whole Healthcare — will impact our client care now that we are a larger, more dynamic organization.

Team Members
Recruiting and retaining workforce is critical for us to both serve a growing community need and provide continuity of care for our clients.  With a larger presence and potential influence in funding negotiations, we have a stronger voice in setting case rates – which help set wages for our team members.  Our size now enables us to offer greater professional development opportunities for team members and greater options to explore clinical and administrative career pathways. More locations also means team members may have more options to relocate closer to their homes, if a position or opportunity becomes available in one of the other new locations.

When our team members have more opportunities like those listed above we are better able to maintain a stable, talented and engaged workforce that ensures our clients have better continuity of care. Our clients, and the community, benefit greatly when we have happy team members.

Care Access
A challenge our clients face is the ability to access care when and where they need it. Limited locations or geographic proximity undermine a client’s ability to get care. As housing becomes less affordable, individuals who have Medicaid coverage, like those we serve, must relocate, forcing them further away from their providers. The effect of this is greater difficulty in making scheduled appointments. Our expansion, including our new Kent location, creates more points of access, nearer to where our clients (and our team members) live. As we continue to integrate primary care into the mix, our clients will only have greater access to more comprehensive healthcare options.

Whole Healthcare
For more than a year now, plans have been underway to bring whole healthcare to several Sound locations, which now will include the addition of two CPC outpatient locations. By making both primary care and behavioral healthcare available to our clients in the same building, we will better be able to support their whole health needs and thus, have the opportunity to improve their overall health. The synergies we will experience by collaborating with our new teams from CPC will only enhance and accelerate this effort.

Care Outcomes
All of us at Sound, from our clinical team members to our front office people, are dedicated to helping our clients get better and achieve their best outcomes possible. Serving more people through more locations only extends the reach and impact of our innovative care model, Reaching Recovery. Implemented two years ago, Reaching Recovery allows us to assign appropriate levels of care for clients based on the intensity level of their need. The model has a proven track record of success in improving client outcomes, increasing team member job satisfaction and promoting cost savings and we’re excited to see where it will take us now that we serve more clients.

A New and Dynamic Organization
We are very pleased to have CPC join Sound to form what I believe is a dynamic, new organization. Our organizations are well-aligned, share very similar missions and, of course serve similar populations. We believe that our partnership will only enhance our ability to support the people we serve, and their families. We also believe that when we support our clients, the larger community, as a whole, benefits as well. As a larger organization with a clear commitment to client care, we are very much looking forward to what the future holds.

 


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