California-based Community Hospice and Health Services is extending its mission to improve quality of life into the behavioral health space.
In addition to the nonprofit’s bereavement care program, five years ago it established Hope Counseling Mental Health Services, to provide talk therapy to individuals from the community in need of additional support. Licensed clinical social workers and a marriage and family therapist staff the center, according to Monica Ojcius, director of strategic development at Community Hospice.
“We formalized a mild to moderate outpatient mental health program. We did that because folks heard about our services for people experiencing grief and bereavement after hospice,” Ojcius told Hospice News. “We started having people that were not related to us through a hospice experience come and ask for help because they had a sudden death or heart attack, car accident, suicide, whatever that was.”
Community Hospice saw this as an extension of their goal of providing whole-person care, Ojcius said. Clients at the center seek help for anxiety, depression, relationship issues, substance abuse disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and a range of other issues.
The center does not have a psychiatrist on staff and refers people out for medication management. It uses a no-referral system, so clients don’t have to consult their primary care physician in order to seek services.
Hope Counseling Mental Health Services receives Medicare reimbursement and holds contracts with a number of commercial players, according to Ojcius. It also offers sliding scale private payments for clients whose insurance does not cover the service. Those payments can be as low as $40, compared to the full cost of $100 to $300.
The health system Sutter Health also supports the center through an annual community impact grant.
The center currently has 107 clients on service and has treated upwards of 500 individuals during the past five years, Ojcius said. That includes children, youths and adults.
“I really love that hospices is one of the few specialties that pay attention to the whole person,” Ojcius said. “The family gets taken care of for bereavement services afterward, but what’s a driving force for me is that we’re not parts of people, we’re a whole person, and so to be able to provide true wraparound services that include mental health for people is an investment in our community at large.”